"There's plenty of drag photos of me circulating the world at the moment and it is something that I really enjoy doing. Also I think that they do refer to wild crazy music that I do tend to write which has also has nothing to do with drag, but also happens to be a lot of drumming and really visual dramatic type stuff which is maybe something that a lot of composers don't tend towards, so that's what they're talking about."
Obviously drag is just one aspect of your life, so what for you is the most important thing about your music?
"Well, I guess fundamentally the important issue about music is that it is something that's with me 24 hours a day and to a certain extent I feel I don't have a choice - life wouldn't have much meaning without music for me. It is everything and everything that I do has something to do with music and if I didn't do that, I'd have a really boring life!"
So, with all that in mind, what would you say is the state of the classical music industry in New Zealand at the moment?
"Underfunded. It is really difficult for anyone in the classical music world to do anything without money. It's not just classical music, it's the whole arts scene. You can't do a quality project without funding and it's just getting worse and worse. It's an issue which every artist in New Zealand really, really understands, especially when you hear about some Scandinavian countries where if you have a project, as long as it's a reasonable project, it gets funded. It just happens because the government says 'this is art, this is an important part of our culture, go for it, do it.'"
You lived overseas, so how different is the New Zealand scene from where you were based in the States?
"The initial thing that you notice is the population difference between the States and New Zealand is so dramatically huge - I mean, a country of 280 million as opposed to a country of 3 million! I was in New York recently and I was telling somebody the population of New Zealand and they couldn't believe it. They said, '3 and a half million, that's basically 20th St to 42nd St in Manhattan and it's true - you know on American standards, we have the population of a small city. When you've got that many people there are pros and cons. The pros are: you've got to have facilities that can cope with that many people in the industry and there's just so much going on, the scene is huge. The scene here just couldn't possibly be that big - there's just no way with a country this small that you can have that sort of facility and resource."
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