I no longer wanted to satisfy myself. I really want to connect with the world and make my music mean something to people.

My dad was all about music. He was a musician, leading a band when I was born. His band was active all through the 40s. He'd started it in the late 20s and 30s. According to the scrapbook, his band was doing quite well around the Boston area. During the Depression they were on radio. It was a jazz-oriented band. He was a trumpet player, and he wrote and arranged for the band. He taught me how to play the piano and read music, and taught me what he knew of standard tunes and so forth. It was a fantastic way to come up in music.

It's one thing to just play a tune, or play a program of music, but it's another thing to practically create a new language of music, which is what 'Kind of Blue' did.

Every time I see a musician - it doesn't matter what age - that inspires me, there's always a secret little wish that maybe we'll play together, because that's how I learn and grow and so forth, you know. But hopefully there's a lot more.

I no longer wanted to satisfy myself. I really want to connect with the world and make my music mean something to people.

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man.

You'll find little schools of musicians experimenting with different ways of making music in Brooklyn, all through Manhattan, in Queens, in Jersey, you know? The city is still bubbling with creativity.