Music is one big thing to me.

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.

Music is what you notice when it's no longer in your presence.

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.

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

There's more bad music in jazz than any other form. Maybe that's because the audience doesn't really know what's happening.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.