1. “Piano is very elegant. I also think it’s a very truthful instrument.”
2. “All of the silent films had live music accompaniment, so it’s actually a very rich period in music.”
3. “Theatre and film are essentially the same – just different kinds of storytelling.“
4. “A lot of what a composer does has to do with storytelling and there are different ways of fusing music with picture to express different storytelling ideas.”
5. “Composing is sort of an intuitive act. You have to put yourself in the right frame of mind.”
6. “I never shield away from a challenge and I love doing big, epic films. They’re interesting to me just on pure music level, just in terms of the amount of music I could create for a symphony orchestra and chorus.”
7. “Music is essentially an emotional language, so you want to feel something from the relationships and build music based on those feelings.”
8. “Sometimes you want to use the music in a clarity way to explain something in the film.”
9. “I have to feel something emotionally on the story to be able to write for it. I turn things down if I don’t feel I’m really right to tell that particular story.”
10. “You can find the whole world of a film in one instrument, or you can find a world of sound in the orchestra.”
