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The great composers I worked with along the way, I always felt they were filmmakers more than composers. They would talk about the story rather than the music.

I'll probably always write film scores. It's the one place where a composer has almost unlimited resources at his beck and call. When music you have written works well in a film, nothing can beat it.

Bach and Beethoven, all of them, they had to write something to please the upper structure, those with money and power.

With a musical, you kind of have to do a mind-meld with the book-writer, the lyricist, the composer, the director - sometimes the producer. I think that's a reason why musicals are the hardest form.

One of the major aspects of film composing is that it's not so much a musical thing as it is communicating your ideas with the director, who often does not come from a musical background.

Film composers are the most prolific music makers on this planet, and most of us are, like, losing our minds if we're doing five or more movies in a year.

There are wonderful composers and librettists out there. It's the lack of creative producers that is troubling.

Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it.

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.

I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive.