The guitar is of no great importance to me. The people it brings to me are what matter. They are what I'm extremely grateful for, because they are alive. The guitar is just an apparatus.

The guitar is of no great importance to me. The people it brings to me are what matter. They are what I'm extremely grateful for, because they are alive. The guitar is just an apparatus.

As an improviser you need to experience the moment- and that includes everything in the moment. Observe the people around you-the bandleader, the bartender-what they wear, how they deal with people, the simple continuity of their presence. As you do that you'll see how you affect them , and you'll play and act accordingly. You need to study the reality of the moment, and that is very rarely about studying modes and intervals.

The music has generated all the techniques I use.

The music has generated all the techniques I use. When I sit down to learn to play something . . . it is not because I want to master a technique. It is because I want to hear what an idea sounds like.

Jazz is the continual pulsation of the now.

True Music, like all true Art, is an experience to be shared, not judged, for praise cannot make it better, as blame cannot make it worse