I am convinced that 100 years from now, people will talk about Elliott Carter as one of the most important figures in the second half of 20th-century music.
Billie Holiday I never met, but I love her music.
Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom!
Erik Satie does not say the opposite of Debussy; he says the same thing only the other way round.
My tastes went all over the place, from Strauss to Mahler. I was never a big Wagner or Tchaikovsky fan. Benjamin Britten, Tallis, all the early English Medieval music, Prokofiev, some Russian composers, mostly the people that were the colorists, the French.
I listen to everything from Ravel to the Bee Gees.
I wanted to grow up to be George and Ira Gershwin from the age of about six.
That's the way Stravinsky was. Bup, bup, bup, bup. The poor guy's dead now. Play it legato.
Copland was one of the first American composers to forge a truly modern style of American classical music while also making use of American popular music - including jazz.
I admire Elliott Carter endlessly. But I have no ambitions to emulate him.
I love Glenn Gould. Max Steiner. John Williams. Louis Prima. Benny Goodman. Miles Davis. John Philip Sousa.
I like Philip Glass. I think he's made some really great contributions to his field. I love his style of playing - it's very loop-style.
I believe that a hundred years from now, when people look back at the 20th century, they will look at Miles, Bird, Clifford Brown, Ella and Dizzy, among elders as our Mozarts, our Chopins, our Bachs and Beethovens.
I think if the United States gave anything to culture at large in the 20th century, the most important contribution made was the popular song.
Shostakovich was one of the great symphonists of all time, and maybe the last great symphonist.
For me, Debussy is the door to all 20th-century music.
Stravinsky influenced film music in general - those stabbing chords and rhythms from 'The Rite of Spring.'
Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.
I love Shostakovich. We were good friends.
Copland was the first important American classical composer to go to work for Hollywood.
We soaked up everything from Beethoven to Chopin to Jimi Hendrix to Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.
The United States created the best popular songs that were ever written, and from the 1920s to the 1940s, it was a renaissance period. It stopped in 1950.
I love all types of music - jazz, great pop music, world music and folk music - but the music I listen to most is piano music from the 18th, 19th and 20th century. Russian music in particular.
I would prefer to listen to a French classical composer like Olivier Messiaen than to the pop hits of the day.
I love listening to things like those wonderful piano pieces of Stockhausen. It's just not my thing as a composer or performer, and thank goodness we're not obliged to be Modernist any more.
