By the latter part of high school, by the middle of junior year in high school, Jay Rodriguez played me some Irakere records that that Paquito [D'Rivera] was on. And he also played me and our friend, Curtis Haywood, some Phil Woods records. And when I heard Phil, I just about lost my mind. I was playing the Charlie Parker Omnibook as part of my lessons. This was the '80s. There was no YouTube and all that. And we had three or four jazz records at that point.

I've been thankful to work with some wonderful people and sort of combine forces with some folks that... like in recent years, working with Alan Ferber or his brother Mark who's a wonderful drummer.

When I was 13, 14, 15, I had played in a couple of jazz ensembles. I didn't know anything about harmony, about II-V-I, though I had learned my scales with Caesar [DiMauro].

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.

I had pestered [Phil Wood] for a long time. He finally agreed to do it. And I was excited and nervous and he couldn't have been nicer or more supportive from the minute I got to his house.

It's a complicated story [hoe I got into music ]. I actually wrote a book about it, titled For Sue.

I heard these stories [about musicians from my mother] and somehow music, it was my understanding what my father had done. I didn't know it was misinformation. It sort of inwardly in my psyche laid the template for music being affiliated with my father and my family.