NPR Music’s Bob Boilen today released a new book entitled Your Song Changed My Life: 35 Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music that Inspired It. One of the artists polled by the founder of All Songs Considered was Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio.

Anastasio’s selection for the song that changed his life was Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” from the play of the same name. In an interview with NPR’s Ari Shapiro, Boilen partially described Anastasio’s choice, stating:

We [Boilen and Anastasio] had a conversation right here at NPR, and he picked Leonard Bernstein and a piece of music from West Side Story. It’s like, “Huh?” How does that happen? What is the connection? What it boils down to, and how it relates to Phish, is that if you really understand music theory — even as a jam band player — you have part of the brain that doesn’t have to think about what to play. It just knows, it just reacts; it’s gut. And that’s where understanding music theory the way Trey Anastasio came to know it is part of everything Phish does.

Read the full interview with Boilen here, and for more on Trey’s selection, listen to him explain his connection in the brief audio clip below:

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=2&t=1&islist=false&id=473953959&m=473993224