[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.

If you want to make [your own way in music] it as a player, which is very difficult, as Art Blakey said to me, "We're blessed to have the opportunity to do this." So just keep that in mind.

I was [ on Thelonious Monk International Saxophone Competition] with Ralph Bowen, and Joel Frahm, Jimmy Greene, John Ellis. You can't play the saxophone better than any of those guys play. So many of those things that those guys could do I wish I could do now, let alone then.

The first CD I had, that I think had had any redeeming qualities to it, I did when I was 25 with a relatively small label called Chiarascuro.

The secret to life and the greatest success strategy of all is to love all of it and fear none of it.

If you are complaining you can't be thinking about or creating what you do want.

Connection to the music and the history was very powerful to me. I think that's what I feel the most blessed about.