The only person who can limit your possibilities is you.

I'm very gratified that I had my little 15 minutes,or whatever [at the Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition]. It certainly didn't make me rich and famous. But it helped a little bit for a while.

Negative thoughts are the nails that build a prison of failure.

[Manhattan School Of Music] didn't' have a jazz undergraduate program at the time so I played a semester in the big band. There was a graduate program. But I wasn't really that involved in jazz yet.

The first jazz cruise that I was on was '91. I played with Maria Schneider and John Fedchock's band. Got to meet some amazing people that week.

I was occasionally getting calls for some things. But I would say, 22 to 29 was a lot of scuffling. Hoping to get called for bad wedding gigs and I did do an off-Broadway show for about 15 months.

I heard these stories [about musicians from my mother] and somehow music, it was my understanding what my father had done. I didn't know it was misinformation. It sort of inwardly in my psyche laid the template for music being affiliated with my father and my family.