Learning to play is mostly about learning to hear, and learning to really listen deeply to sound in a musical way is a lifetime's worth of work.

The first thing I learned was the theme from Peter Gunn.

Listening is the key to everything good in music.

I was deep in the zone of practicing almost constantly

Im always trying to find connections between things. That art is the juxtaposition of a lot of things that seem unrelated but add up to something recognizable.

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.

I think jazz is actually quite unforgiving in its disdain for nostalgia. It demands creativity and change at its highest level.