Listening is the key to everything good in music.

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.

I was deep in the zone of practicing almost constantly

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

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 try to be prepared for the moment, through understanding, and being warmed up, knowing all about chords and scales, so I don't even have to think and I can get right to what it is I want to say.

I have to admit that more and more lately, the whole idea of jazz as an idiom is one that I've completely rejected. I just don't see it as an idiomatic thing any more...To me, if jazz is anything, it's a process, and maybe a verb, but it's not a thing. It's a form that demands that you bring to it things athat are valuable to you, that are personal to you. That, for me, is a pretty serious distinction that doesn't have anything to do with blues, or swing, or any of these other things that tend to be listed as essentials in order for music to be jazz with a capital J.