You have to see your unimportance before you can see your importance and your significance to the world.

When we first started playing we did a lot of rehearsing. We used to write out everything. In fact, that's the way everybody rehearses: we play the tunes and improvise.

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 just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.

I just try to play music from my heart and bring as much beauty as I can to as many people as I can. Just give them other alternatives, especially people who arent exposed to creative music.

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