[We need] someone like Don Sickler, who is an amazing trumpet player and who is also a publisher and amazing producer and composer and arranger. There's a lot of ways you can make a contribution.

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.

All we can do is go about our work. But we can have a goal. We can have a dream.

Justin [Di Cioccio] was [at Laguardia School of Arts]. He later took over at Manhattan. But I knew Justin through the McDonald's band, which at the time I was finishing high school and starting college, I got involved with. I was not that heavily involved with the school at MSM my first year there. I took a semester off to start my 2nd year. Took classes I felt like taking during my third semester, but by the start of my third year, September of '86, they began the undergraduate jazz program and I joined that program.

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.

Many of the people I'm gratified to see have gotten acclaim like Mark Turner or Bill Charlap. Ed Simon or Maria Schneider or Jim McNeely or Scott Robinson. Ken Peplowski, who is a friend and somebody I admire a lot.

Positivity is like a boomerang. The more we put it out there, the more it comes back to us.