There is a very small chance that you might be really brilliant and really talented.

Benny Carter came up to me and said to me, "You know, in the whole history of the alto, I think Phil is the guy we should all be emulating." The king! So look, I'm so blessed that my first hero took me in.

The first jazz cruise that I was on was '91. I played with Maria Schneider and John Fedchock's band. Got to meet some amazing people that week.

I got to talk to Mel Lewis a lot as a teenager. I think that's what really impacted me the most around that time.

[Charlie "Bird" Parker] would sit down and ask [Phil Wood], "What do you think about this whole secondary Viennese school with Schoenberg, Berg and Webern? Are you listening to that music and what do you feel about it?" These were the conversations that he was having. And he also said, what he learned from Charlie Parker was, not that he studied with him in the formal sense, is that the first thing that Charlie Parker would always ask was, "Did you eat today?".

There is a very small chance that you might be really brilliant and really talented.

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