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.

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.

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

I always felt that I was born in the wrong era. I wanted to be friends with John Garfield, for instance. He was one of the only actors that refused to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee back when the Hollywood Ten blacklist was happening in the McCarthy period. I wish I could've been friends with Charlie Parker and played with him. That's my period. I feel real close to the '40s - and actually I was born in '37, so I was a kid singing on the radio in the '40s. But I always dreamed of going to big cities.

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.

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

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