One of the remarkable things about Dad is the way he could mingle different, seemingly disparate musical worlds -- classical, American pop and jazz. He just heard things, I guess, that other people didn't hear. He made it his life's work to study the various instruments and the best ranges to write for them, and then how to double them and layer them.

My father understood the orchestra so well that he never overwrote anything. He always got the most he could from the least amount of writing.

My father and Frank Sinatra respected each other's abilities enormously. My father always said Frank brought out the best in him. And his arrangements gave Frank a new musical playground to wander in. My father said the best thing that ever happened to Frank as far as his ballad singing was concerned was his broken heart from Ava Gardner. Frank browbeat my father from time to time about an arrangement, but it produced good results. Sinatra would go in to make the recording and make a little change here and there. He'd say, 'Do a little Puccini thing there.' Or a little Gershwin or Ellington or whatever. My father would make a cryptic note. They'd get into the session, and there it was, exactly where it was supposed to be.

I wanted a trumpet concerto that reflected Native American music because, well, there aren't any. I looked around for one but couldn't find anything. So it's a wide-open field.

It is possible that the two viruses could mingle in one cell and from that single cell out would emerge a hybrid virus, a virus that had the characteristic of human influenza moving easily from person to person as well as the avian influenza characteristic being unrecognizable to the human immune system.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line upon disparate images, the shifting phantasmagoria, which is our actual experience.