David Lang

And then graduate school was where and what?

I went to the University of Iowa, which at the time had a fantastic music department, and I got my master's in Iowa, and I got my doctorate at Yale.

And I've been teaching at Yale for a very long time.

Your father was a doctor, yes?

My father was a doctor.

So it was very clear to me when I decided not to go on with that what the risks were going to be.

I'm guessing it was even clearer to your parents.

No, they never gave up.

They never gave up.

I had a performance when I was 27 or whatever with the Cleveland Orchestra and my mother in tears after the performance leaned down and I thought, I'm finally going to get the approval that I've always wanted.

And instead she said, there's still time to go to medical school.

How did you feel about that?

I told my parents they probably shouldn't come to any of my concerts for a while.

And is that what happened?

That's what happened, yeah.

Did they ever come around?

My mother, unfortunately, didn't live long enough to see me make a living, but my father lived quite a long time and ended up being totally fine with my being a musician.

I'm glad to hear that.

That's actually the best thing that the Pulitzer Prize is good for, is getting one's parents off one's back.

I wrote this piece because I had this idea about how to make a new kind of passion, which I could believe.