Sometimes I say to my students, "We get to come and listen to our favorite recordings and try to learn from them and emulate that and hopefully we can inspire other people the way we've been inspired."

Larry [ Laurenzano] said to me one day near the end of junior high, "Jon, are you Jewish?" I said, "No." And he said, "Well neither am I. I'm not sure of Caesar DiMauro, but he teaches at the JCC and I got you a scholarship there."

My mother was a singer, and I never heard her sing a note in my life.

The more energy you spend worrying about the people who didn't get on your bus, the less you will have for the people who are on your bus. And if you are worrying about the people who didn't get on your bus you won't have the energy to keep on asking new people to get on.

[Eddie Locke] had a huge impact in my life. He was a great jazz drummer. He was mentored by Papa Joe Jones and he played for many years with Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge and actually got me on a gig with Roy Eldridge when I was 20 that I'll never forget.

When I was a kid, I always saw these pictures of a man called Bob Gordon with a baritone saxophone, who I understood was my father. Turns out he wasn't. He was my mother's first husband.

[We need] someone like Don Sickler, who is an amazing trumpet player and who is also a publisher and amazing producer and composer and arranger. There's a lot of ways you can make a contribution.