There are times when what's happening in rock is the best music in the world, and there are times when there is nothing worthwhile at all.

I just got to hear every note. After I left Birdland, I started working at the Jazz Gallery. In the end, I still couldn't play, but I knew how to listen. I was probably the world's best listener.

One performer whose band played my music better than I could myself was Art Farmer. He recorded 'Sing Me Softly of the Blues' and 'Ad Infinitum'.

When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key.

It would be really hard to get serious about anything political today unless it was a joke.

Living composers writing for big band are very few and far between. There are not a lot of them, and I have a talent for doing it. I am zeroing in on what I do best.

Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving.