Joe Henderson, who I maybe, to me, if I had to pick one improviser in my life that I saw live that blew my mind most, especially as a teenager.

There were a lot of great things you could go and hear for very little money at the time [ '80s]. Mike Stern is still playing at the 55 Bar on Mondays or Wednesdays.

A guy like Scott [Robinson] plays the whole history of music on every instrument you've ever heard of. He's just kind of an unparalleled genius.

The Monk competition did open some doors. And I was thankful for that.

[Larry Laurenzano] gave me a junior high school saxophone to take to high school, because I was always taking one of our school horns home to practice and I couldn't afford to buy one. He gave my friend, Tyrone, a tuba and he gave me a junior high saxophone for each of us to use at Performing Arts High School with. My audition piece was selections from Rocky. We were not sophisticated. But we had some spirit about it. We enjoyed it, and it was a way out.

Positivity is like a boomerang. The more we put it out there, the more it comes back to us.

The first CD I had, that I think had had any redeeming qualities to it, I did when I was 25 with a relatively small label called Chiarascuro.