Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

The Russian composers, especially, tricked the symphony orchestra into the kind of dynamic, rhythmic thing

When [Billy] Strayhorn came on the scene, he just blew us away.

This life of being a transient human being has gotten to a point when it's very hard to bear

If you've only got one horn playing, I still want the sense of ensemble.

You start way down on a low B flat on the tuba and you have a chromatic scale; you can match the colours all the way up, till you get to the top of the trumpet.

Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones