First you imitate, then you innovate.

I never thought Jazz was meant to be a museum piece like other dead things once considered artistic.

The way you change and help music is by tryin' to invent new ways to play

The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.

My future starts when I wake up every morning.

There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.

You want to know how I started playing trumpet? My father bought me one, and I studied the trumpet. And everybody I heard that I liked, I picked up things from.