We had Bob's [Gordon] records, and he's on Clifford Brown's first record as a leader. I believe it was Clifford Brown's first record as a leader and had the original versions of Daahoud and Joy Spring that were arranged by Bob's best friend, the West Coast tenor player named Jack Montrose, who I later met.

Larry [ Laurenzano] said to me one day near the end of junior high, "Jon, are you Jewish?" I said, "No." And he said, "Well neither am I. I'm not sure of Caesar DiMauro, but he teaches at the JCC and I got you a scholarship there."

The best thing you can do is just go and have fun with [competition].

I just think that I associated music with something that was healing and transformative as a kid.

I wasn't expecting [the Monk competition] would necessarily do that. So I just did what I did and some good things continued to happen and some doors continued to open and that kind of led me into the different associations that I developed in my 30s and some records that I've made on ArtistShare over the last 10 years or so.

Sometimes I say to my students, "We get to come and listen to our favorite recordings and try to learn from them and emulate that and hopefully we can inspire other people the way we've been inspired."

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