As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something thats never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.

I learned at a very young age that music teaches you about life. When you're in the midst of improvisation, there is no yesterday and no tomorrow — there is just the moment that you are in. In that beautiful moment, you experience your true insignificance to the rest of the universe. It is then, and only then, that you can experience your true significance.

In the midst of creating, a person is raised to another level of consciousness.

I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.

The whole underlying theme for the new music... is to communicate honest, human values, and in doing that to try to improve the quality of life.

I told my students the other day in class, which is about the spirituality and creativity as much as it is about music. I said, 'If you're walking down the street and you see a baby carriage, and there's a baby in the carriage; you look down and your eyes meet the eyes of the baby. The baby looks at you: That's the kind of moment you're in when you're playing.

Before music there was silence and the duet format allows you to build from the silence in a very special way.