I always tell my students when you're going to be a jazz musician the first thing you've got to do is be a professional musician, and that means you have to feed yourself with the instrument.

I'm only involved really right now with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Brass Fantasy.

Jazz is neither specific repertoire, nor academic exercise... but a way of life.

What I've been trying to do for years is to get the music played on a station other than jazz stations, you know, to expand the audience.

Because people really got tired, too, of the same old formatted sort of thing, and the same old formatted music.

They were missing all the enthusiasm, the creativity; that whole excitement about the music was lost. A lot of people are really going back looking for that.

And there are a lot of people interested in creative music, there are more and more and more.