You hear about the struggles with substances and all that, but [Phil Wood] was a really a great guy. This was a great man.

There were a lot of great things you could go and hear for very little money at the time [ '80s]. Mike Stern is still playing at the 55 Bar on Mondays or Wednesdays.

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.

I don't want my children to be what I want them to be. I want them to become everything God created them to be.

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

[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.

There's a famous story about Dizzy [Gillespie] and Art Blakey taking him aside, and spending a whole night-long talk with [Phil Wood], "Man we believe in you. You can play. So don't be walking around with a frown on your face or whatever, getting yourself into trouble. You have got a gift, and nobody is going to take that away from you." So that meant the world to him.