I definitely had some moments, where, "Wow, these were some hard chords" on some gig.

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.

Instead of being disappointed about where you are, be optimistic about where you are going.

I saw a nice interview with Dave Binney recently. He was saying, "Man it was never easy. It's not like 'Oh wow, the good old days.' What, when certain people couldn't vote?" There was more work for musicians in the '40s, '50s, '60s. But I don't think it was ever easy.

Earlier that year [1996], Ronnie Scott came to Visiones when I was playing with Maria and he hired me to come and play in his club in London, which I was gratified by. That allowed me to make some more connections.

I just think that I associated music with something that was healing and transformative as a kid.

I never really had a classical saxophone set-up. I just had a middle of the road set up.