The bandstand is a sacred place.

We learn a language through its song, and even if you don't have music you have the song of people you love's voice, and you'll notice that song in their voice.

My daddy expected that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He had lived in an America of continual social progress.

There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

The musicians, Duke Ellington, his thing was not about separating himself from the rest of America. Louis Armstrong - go to the forefathers of our music - Jelly Roll Morton - they're not preaching a separatist agenda. They're not taking their music and saying, "This is for me."

We don't have the leadership or the understanding of the value of this, and when your political systems and your economic systems start to fail, it's only a cultural understanding that allows you to reconstruct them and to get back to who you are. For some reason, it hasn't dawned on us yet.

Love is the spiritual essence of what we do. Technique is the manifestation of the preparation and investment as a result of the love.