I realized late in life that my twin passions are music and people.

What came up at age 49 is I realized that of all the things I'm interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is figuring out what makes people tick, why people think the way they do, why they act the way they do. And I realized that music is such a great way to investigate why people do what they do.

Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world.

As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody's individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage, you realize how life changes, and you learn how to be more open and adaptive to what is around us.

From the sight-reading abilities of the students who came to the [reading sessions], 95% of whom were not music majors, to the great questions and comments we got from students in the classes, to the amazing enthusiasm and energy of the jam session, everywhere we went we could feel the intelligence and open-mindedness of Harvard undergraduates.

Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.