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."

The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.

Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.

There's so much spirit of integration and democracy in jazz.

And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

I try to put a lot of our music in my music - by that I mean of American music.

Don't bullshit' just play.