You do [jazz] because you love it and hope many some others may as well. You do this because you need it.

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 heard Charlie Parker the first time on a record, it had seemed like an old, scratchy kind of record and I didn't get it.

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.

Adversity is not a dead end but a detour to a better outcome than you can imagine!

Teaching has definitely become a big part of my life in the past ten plus years. As it often does for many dedicated players. Because you can have some great gigs.

Families that I lived with a little bit in junior high and quite a bit in high school and college. Just to have a safe, sane space with food and things like that. That's what I needed. And people were really kind and really generous. So I think the world kind of opened up my first years of performing arts, studying classical saxophone with Caesar DiMauro.