I think [Phil Wood] didn't suffer fools gladly, but he loved supporting young people that loved the music.

[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.

If you go with that spirit, good things will come for you. If you go into it with an assumption that you're a genius and that you're entitled to something, it's a little tougher.

Sometimes you think "Okay, well I'm going to play my horn, and I'm going to study Charlie "Bird" Parker solos or [John Coltrain] or whatever." But as [Phil Wood] said to me, "Man, Bird listened to everything."

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

So often the difference between success and failure is belief. Belief leads to action and execution.

Optimism is a competitive advantage.