I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone.

The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music.

Bamboo is not a weed, it's a flowering plant. Bamboo is a magnificent plant.

Jazz is people's music, a collectivity.

There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else's language.

When I came up, it was all about originality and collective research. There is an awful lot of imitation going on now.

I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years, and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you, the only limit is the imagination.