You fuel your life with trust and love instead of fear and doubt.

[Manhattan School Of Music] were kind of just getting the jazz program up and going when I first started there. I was 17 in September of 1984 when I started there.

Now we also need people who just love to listen to the music. And we need people that want to work to facilitate it. That want to do work, have somebody like Bret Primack, the jazz video guy.

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

I was also sitting in from the middle of senior year of high school at Sweet Basil, it was a great club in New York.

I got to talk to people like Mel [Lewis] and Milt Hilton and Benny Carter and Clark Terry and... Jay McShann. I just found myself in some circumstances, on some gigs or sometimes in clubs, with the ability to talk to some of these people. Just being around their energy and being around that history was invaluable. And what I normally say to young people that are getting into the music, if you can and go... now there's less of those folks around, sadly.

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