The first jazz cruise that I was on was '91. I played with Maria Schneider and John Fedchock's band. Got to meet some amazing people that week.

My life is a gift not an obligation and I Get To make the most of it.

The secret to life and the greatest success strategy of all is to love all of it and fear none of it.

There's a lot of good people out here that want to help you grow and to help the music to continue to grow and evolve and go find those folks and be around them and carry it on... carrying the tradition on in the way with what it is that you have to offer. Find some good people in the music that will believe in you and they'll help you do that.

[Charlie Parker] was kind of a sponge and intrigued by it all.That's similar to what Phil [Woods] told me about Bird, too. Like he was into cooking. He was just into a lot of things. Yeah, it's about dealing with bebop and jazz and Trane [John Coltrain] and post-Trane and knowing the history. But you've got to live. You have to experience things. Know something in this world. So it was a very deep education about what it means to try and be an artist.

Benny Carter came up to me and said to me, "You know, in the whole history of the alto, I think Phil is the guy we should all be emulating." The king! So look, I'm so blessed that my first hero took me in.

If I could have picked two guys on the planet, to have some exposure to at that age, those were the two right guys [Phil Woods and Charles McPherson].