We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us.

There's always the cliche of the choir shouting and clapping. OK, you have to do that, but there's also introspective parts, parts where you just follow someone that's preaching. There's lots of different emotions and moods that a service requires.

Even in these times, there are still neighbors that will turn their backs on neighbors.

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.

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.

My father was a teacher, my mama was a community worker, I taught in so many schools. So when you get that experience of how to communicate with younger people, put that hand on them and give them that old-school feeling, the maturity and adult, a lot of our kids just need the feeling of that love, and that's the frame of reference that I teach from and that's the frame of reference that all of our musicians in the Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.