It’s quite likely you’ve heard the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang. After all, the University of Iowa alumnus—and current Golden Globe nominee—is one of America’s most performed composers.

He’s known for writing the string quartet arrangements for the score of the Darren Aronofsky film Requiem for a Dream. Haven’t seen it? The recurring theme from that score has since been used numerous times in movie trailers, most prominently in a re-orchestration for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Lang, who spoke on the UI campus in September as part of the Creative Matters series and comes back to Iowa City to teach master classes, talks about how a rainy day set him on the path toward music composition, how he became involved with the Requiem score, and how far one should go to pursue an artistic curiosity.