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.

Phil [Wood] was very passionate. Very committed. He felt very blessed that the people that cared about him and took him aside... if he was out of line or drinking too much, being too surly.

Sometimes you think "Okay, well I'm going to play my horn, and I'm going to study Charlie "Bird" Parker solos or [John Coltrain] or whatever." But as [Phil Wood] said to me, "Man, Bird listened to everything."

I had played some festivals with people and met and been around some good people, for sure. But what I say to my friends and students, anything like that with a grant or a competition, it involves a great deal of luck.

One negative person can create a miserable office environment for everyone else.

There are a lot of people that impacted me. I remember hearing Oscar Peterson live at the Blue Note, which was very expensive, but... $50 in the '80s... hard to come up with. But it was amazing.

Dust on gold doesn't change the nature of gold.