I don't really call myself a composer.

I consider myself a musician.

I've done a lot of performance practice, Baroque playing, and some of the joy and the challenge of it is figuring out what the composer intended... You have music of the 17th century - it's all whole notes and half notes. But inside of that, there are so many things that one can do, at least according to what we know about performance practice.

I've been gearing up for this future of writing a lot of new music by digging into my favorite old stuff, and twisting it around and highlighting the things I really love.

I've been singing with Roomful of Teeth since the beginning in 2009, and it's a really mind-blowingly wonderful vocal ensemble. Very brave and very creative, and they're some of my closest friends.

To call somebody a Jewish composer is obviously redundant.