people she respects

Which musician has come closest to sustaining the sort of consistently challenging long-term career that she has in mind ?

I don’t necessarily look at it like that. Besides, I don’t think I’ve been as extreme as people think I am. I just think change is more natural than staying the same. It’s like film directors : just because they make one movie that happens in space, it doesn’t mean that their next ten happen in space. Their next one could be a family movie or one set in the 1800s. But a lot of music these days is stagnant. In the last 50 years pop music has become a very profitable thing and the market has made it stagnant.

To finally answer your question, I have a lot of respect for people like Ravel and Debussy ; people who bridged the gap between more serious music and more public music, and were very true to themselves and didn’t water themselves down to please anyone.

The Scotman, August 25 2007