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My proposition is that music is at the heart of what 'The Magic Flute' means: that it's Mozart's music, not the words, we should be attending to. Music expresses what can't be expressed otherwise.

This is part of human nature, the desire to change consciousness.

Mozart's seeming frothiness is just a light touch with very profound material. That's what I've found working on 'The Magic Flute.'

I do not consider my self as having mastered the flute, but I get a real kick out of trying.

Magic's an art where you use slight of hand or illusion to create wonder. And I was just intrigued with that idea.

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art.

The flute was an alternative to being a small fish in an increasingly bigger pool filled with a number of great guitar players.

That creates the magic, and that's the wonderment of the musical process and how precious that is.

For me it's the instrument. If I want to think of a flute and the state of the arts I hear a vibrato; I don't know what a flute is unless the person plays it for me.

Magic symbolises the subconscious - that part of us that is creative and powerful that we sometimes don't tap into.