Jazz never ends... it just continues.

Jazz is an endless source of ideas, because you can use anything. You can play operatic arias. You can incorporate them into jazz. You can play gypsy music and incorporate it into jazz. You can European classical and you can incorporate it into jazz. You can use anything and jazz it up, as they used to say.

There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.

I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.

I feel that L.A. has not always been my strongest base for support. That can be for various reasons.

I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.