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.

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.

Music is one big thing to me.

If jazz has to be termed as a wave, then music is a sea, but if the reflectors in the water is the chord.

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

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

People sometimes say it takes a long time to become a Jazz fan, but for me it took about five seconds.