More and more as time has gone on, I realize that playing is really more about listening than it is about playing.

I don't worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about Jazz.

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.

The more I can learn about music, the more I learn about other things.

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

Somehow trumpet is the reference point for me it was actually my first instrument.

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.