No challenge can stop you if you have the courage to keep moving forward in the face of your greatest fears and biggest challenges. Be courageous.

Don't chase success. Decide to make a difference and success will find you.

You can’t be a great leader if all you are serving is yourself.

I have to say, music was always my self preservation survival technique. This sort of sacred space in my life and in my mind.

We had been thrown out of a couple of places that we had lived in when I was a kid and all the family photos and records and toys were long since gone. But I think somebody had given us a couple of records.

Sometimes I would go on Sundays and play with Doc Cheatham. I was also playing in a band of teenagers led by Don Sickler called Young Sounds, and The McDonald's Big Band led by Rich De Rosa and Justin Di Cioccio. All those guys were great educators and musicians and taught me a lot! Simultaneous to all this, another one of my musical fathers came into my life, Eddie Locke.

I took some comp for non-comp major classes with Giacomo Bracali and Ludmila Ulela, who was a really famous composition teacher.