When I was a kid, I always saw these pictures of a man called Bob Gordon with a baritone saxophone, who I understood was my father. Turns out he wasn't. He was my mother's first husband.

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."

There are a lot of people that impacted me. I remember hearing Oscar Peterson live at the Blue Note, which was very expensive, but... $50 in the '80s... hard to come up with. But it was amazing.

Pretty fortunate that with the exception of two months when I was 23, that I worked in a law office pushing paper around. I was always able to eke out a living somehow. So I'm blessed.

Justin Di Cioccio led a jazz program at Music and Art, but there was no jazz in Performing Arts. After they joined, it became Laguardia School of Arts.

Phil [Wood] said to me in the car going back, he said, "Look man, you better know why you're playing this music. Because I've known too many who lived and died for it. And if you're not trying to change the world, I'm not interested."

There are a lot of different ways you can be a part of this music and love it and make a contribution that's personal to you.