But if I didn't have to make money, I would still play my horn.

I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.

I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

What I am more concerned about is whether our whole civilization will be around in the next 25 years.

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 think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.

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.