If I told you all the people that have secretly told me I've influenced them, you'd never believe it, and you'll never see it in print, either.

Concord, California was a great place to grow up.

When I was 20, Shostakovich was my favorite composer. I still find his Fifth Symphony wonderful, with its outstanding themes and rhythms. That's the piece that made me want to be a classical composer.

Jazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not going to survive unless it's got some jazz influence.

I used to take my mother to Yosemite. When I turned 14, I got my driver's license, and that's where she'd want to go, so I'd go take her there for two weeks.

Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.