Now the big question is if you are going to go to all the trouble of setting an opera and making all that music and so on, there's got to be some aspect that you can do in an opera that really makes it worth while.

As a soloist Bolcom has recorded his own compositions as well as music by Gershwin and Milhaud (Johnson 2001). A. Paul Minnesota in April 2007.

Bolcom taught composition at the University of Michigan from 1973–2008. He is married to mezzo-soprano Joan Morris.