I listen to everything.

Although we are being presented in Carnegie Hall, we have to furnish a budget for our guest stars, and for the music writing - which is a huge budget in any orchestra that plays popular music.

I started off as a studio pianist in Hollywood.

While there used to be one or two Pops orchestras, now there are all kinds of European orchestras that suddenly look upon this as a golden wand that can enable them to make money recording this music.

I recorded with Sinatra, but the recording business is a very strange strata right now.

I worked with practically everybody in the business in all of the years in NBC, but I worked personally many years with people like Crosby and Sinatra, so of course that was a great ground school for me.

You can tell by the applause: There's perfunctory applause, there's light applause, and then there's real applause. When it's right, applause sounds like vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce.