The first reason for starting to do the symphony concerts was to play this new piece of mine.

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.

When we've finished the current tour I'm going to go back to Italy and see if I can do some more writing.

Life on the road is murder. It's as though life begins and ends when you have your horn in your mouth.

What I came back to is that jazz is a music to be played and not to be intellectualized on.

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

I've always wanted a C trumpet on top, to have that same kind of facility without shouting.