Film music reaches more

On his enduring appeal and power to sell tickets, he says: 'The ability to know and like something is very primal. If someone plays something that is achingly beautiful, it will be achingly beautiful no matter who hears it.'

Indeed, over the phone, he sounds every bit as charming as his music.

He is polite and unassuming, apologising profusely for his 20-minute delay. On realising that it is close to midnight in Singapore, he exclaims in horror but is quick to add jokingly: 'But you are young, you don't mind staying up late, right?'

He chats unhurriedly with this reporter, like an old friend, though he is a busy man, wearing the hats of musician, father, husband and, most recently, creative consultant for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

This, he says, has led him to be extremely picky about the projects he works on.

'As I get older, I tend to choose people who are good people that I want to be with,' he says candidly.

But he puts no limits on the types of projects that he works on. From playing at President Barack Obama's inauguration to working on the soundtrack of movies such as Lee Ang's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Rob Marshall's Memoirs Of A Geisha, he has done it all.

'I think that doing all these allows me to have the skill-sets that are important to a modern musician. Film is a popular art form and it reaches a much larger number of people than music itself,' he says.

'When playing for a movie soundtrack, you also work with so many more people, as opposed to 15 or so when performing with the Silk Road Ensemble,' he adds.

But the self-proclaimed 'loving dad', who is trying to find out all about law school because his youngest child, Emily, 24, is about to enrol at one, acknowledges that he could not have achieved so much without his understanding family.

'I have a great and unbelievably strong wife who doesn't mind that I'm away a lot of the time,' he says.

'But to me, it is like, are you home for vacations? For birthdays? And I am, because these are the things that have the most value,' he adds.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.