Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.

Jazz is democracy in music.

The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.

I love Gustavo Dudamel and I love what he does for classical music, and I love what he comes out of, El Sistema and the old man Abreu. When we were in Venezuela, I had the chance to go to his building. He had, like, five or six orchestras playing of kids from the hood playing, like, Mahler's third symphony and Shostakovich fifth and Beethoven. Man, it's unbelievable. I mean, they could play.

When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.

As you get older - for example, in our band we have members of our orchestra, like Carlos Enriquez and Ali Jackson and Walter Blanning. I taught them when they were in high school, and now they teach me.I'll regularly call Ali and say, "Man, can you break this rhythm down for me?" Or Carlos was actually our music director in Cuba, and he's been instrumental in a lot of my education, and I started to develop a saying with them, because they tease me all the time - you get older, you have that familiar relationship - I say, "You have to follow your young leadership, too."

When me and my brother would go to see our daddy playing, there'd be 30 people in the audience. I was only 14 or 15, but I realised something was wrong.