I finally got to junior high and I got to start saxophone. There were a few of us that were in the beginner band in sixth grade that made it to the advanced band, which was called the morning band at our junior high school in Staten Island.

Challenges ONLY make you STRONGER!!!

I was studying with Joe Allard, which was great, as a saxophone student. Being able to study with Joe Allard was an incredible experience.

We [with my mother] listened to music when I was a kid. We listened to a little bit of Bob's [Gordon] music, but just a little, I think it was too painful for her.

There's a lot of good people out here that want to help you grow and to help the music to continue to grow and evolve and go find those folks and be around them and carry it on... carrying the tradition on in the way with what it is that you have to offer. Find some good people in the music that will believe in you and they'll help you do that.

Justin [Di Cioccio] was [at Laguardia School of Arts]. He later took over at Manhattan. But I knew Justin through the McDonald's band, which at the time I was finishing high school and starting college, I got involved with. I was not that heavily involved with the school at MSM my first year there. I took a semester off to start my 2nd year. Took classes I felt like taking during my third semester, but by the start of my third year, September of '86, they began the undergraduate jazz program and I joined that program.

[Phil Wood] was a great artist, and he knew things. He could be mildly conversant in several languages.