It is Jazz's very nature to change, to develop & adapt to the circumstances of its environment.

Players get to that intermediate level where they can already play pretty good, and that's kind of a dangerous period because they tend to start playing only the things that they can play, rather than the things they can't.

...to me if it's anything, jazz is a verb-it's more like a process than it is a thing.

Most guys at Berklee are going to wind up truck drivers.

My older brother Mike is an excellent trumpet player. By the time he was 12, he was playing around Kansas City in classical situations. He was already an amazing talent.

Avant-garde, jazz, pop, classical, country and western, rock, free, straight-ahead, etc. are ultimately meaningless terms in the face of the music being discussed at best - at worst, those terms often serve as code words for what is in fact a cultural / political discussion more than a musical one.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.