I feel kind of guilty saying this as an "educated" composer and musician. But when I was in college, I wasn’t actually a very good music theory student. We were studying harmony and voice-leading of Western Classical music, as thousands of music students have done across many diverse national boundaries and eras. But I wanted to be a great composer and create my own original musical language, with new chords, original rhythms, and inventive musical forms. So, instead of doing my theory homework, I went to the music library and voraciously checked out recordings of all the 20th and 21st Century music I could find. And not just concert art music—rock ‘n’ roll, Jazz, pop, and so-called “world” music. One of the fateful things I got was a recording of traditional American fiddle music. I remember listening with amazement and wonder to this recording. Here was a rich and sophisticated musical tradition that was part of the broader sphere of Western music, but which had evolved separately from the European art music tradition. The musicians were highly trained, though not trained in the Western Classical tradition; they played with technical facility and heart and were clearly virtuoso musicians in their own tradition. It was all the more intriguing for me that this musical tradition was, in my estimation, quintessentially “American.” It’s a well-known fact that many great composers of the past integrated so-called vernacular musical styles into their work. I do not believe that other genres of music need to “rescued” or “sanitized” by Classical composers, but rather that we as Classical composers need to access these other musical styles to enrich our own work. I am proud to acknowledge my diverse sources of musical inspiration, and I believe the best composers are those who do not ignore the rich musical traditions in their own backyard.