When you're artistic director of a program, you present the music you want to present.

People don't really think other people are the same.

The extent of his influence across jazz, across American music, and around the world has such continuing stature that he is one of the few who can easily be mentioned with Stravinsky, Picasso and Joyce. His life was the embodiment of one who moves from rags to riches, from anonymity to internationally imitated innovator. Louis Daniel Armstrong supplied revolutionary language that took on such pervasiveness that it became commonplace, like the light bulb, the airplane, the telephone.

The point is, you have an ethnic heritage and you have a human heritage. Your human heritage includes everything of human value.

Our democratic richness arrives when we're able to comprehend our collective humanity accurately.

Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music.

When a violent minority that crosses color lines comes to believe that killing those you know or do not know is a reasonable solution to problems, we are in need of another vision.