All we can do is go about our work. But we can have a goal. We can have a dream.

I took some comp for non-comp major classes with Giacomo Bracali and Ludmila Ulela, who was a really famous composition teacher.

There is a very small chance that you might be really brilliant and really talented.

[My mother told me] stories about Nat King Cole, and Miles Davis, and seeing pictures in later years with band leaders like Alvino Ray.

I left school December of 1988. I was 21 at the time. And I hadn't quite finished my degree because I had done eight semesters, not understanding that I was going to have to finish the degree without the TAPP and Pell grant money that I had been using towards paying for much of my college tuition. And I didn't have any money. So I said, "Alright." And circumstances there were such that I thought it was maybe time to move on anyway.

It's a complicated story [hoe I got into music ]. I actually wrote a book about it, titled For Sue.

It's very unlikely you're a genius, but, if you're ready to work at it hard and you want to listen to music all the time and you want to learn about it and you want to be around the people who do it, you'll find your own way.