Failure is not meant to be final and fatal.... It is meant to refine you to be all that you are meant to be.

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.

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

I was really falling in love with jazz and dedicating myself in that direction.

I love to see people recognized [me on scene].

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.

I had a great year with Bob Mintzer [at Laguardia School of Arts]. Bob is great. We could have just brought the clarinet or dealt with classical stuff, or brought the flute or just dealt with comp and arranging... what a great teacher.