I was 7 years old when I began composing. I began composing, improvising at the piano, the usual story.

It all began, as usual, with the Greeks,

I've been writing and composing songs since I was 5 years old.

As for my own music, I've never written a book about it. I'm not pedagogical... When I write an abstract piano sonata or a concerto, I write what I feel. I'm not a self-conscious composer.

For me, arguably the story of telomeres and telomerase began thousands of years ago, in the cornfields of the Maya highlands of Central America.

I was 7 years old when the '80s began and 17 years old when they ended, so it was an incredibly formative decade for me.