I had a lot of bad habits in how I was playing the horn. And I slowly, in high school and college, started to recognize them and get them a little better. But it was not an overnight process, I'll say that.

[Phil wood] put on some [Igor] Stravinsky and say to follow the score, tell me to play me the opening to the Rite of Spring. Or, "I'm going to play you some 20th century obscure classical composer you don't know". Or, "Let's listen to some Charles Ives, let's sight read some Bartok violin duets", etc.

Life and success are about what you choose to believe.

I think what frustrated me more than anything else in my formative years was that I just had to work. I had to have a job. Like twenty to thirty hours a week, a lot of times in high school and college. And that was hard.

My mother was a singer, and I never heard her sing a note in my life.

Joe Henderson with Ron Carter and Al Foster at the Vanguard was just wow. And the energy of the three of them.

[Manhattan School Of Music] didn't' have a jazz undergraduate program at the time so I played a semester in the big band. There was a graduate program. But I wasn't really that involved in jazz yet.