Does the Royal Lyceum Theatre pose any particular challenges?
I love to adapt my pieces for specific settings. This is going to be a new challenge. It’s a more conventional theatre setting but it is a beautiful building which will bring something special to the performance. I’ve got a couple of days before the performance to go into the theatre and figure it out. What kind of audience feedback have you had? A man downstairs from me in my building in New York said he came to see the piece and felt good for three weeks. We can’t promise everyone will feel like that but hearing that made my day. You and your work are very hard to define. How would you describe what you do? I always say I’m a verb not a noun. My music, particularly my vocal music, is at the centre of everything I do. Your career spans more than 45 years. How has your work evolved over that period? As I’ve got older my impulse has been to make my work simpler and simpler, more essentialist, refined, honest and quiet. That’s very deliberate. It takes a lot of work to get something very
