Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.

He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes have been shined? How much mascara put on? Rouge? How many of those impossible bowties have been tied? How many love songs have been sung? How many dances have been danced? How many have passed to the sound of his music? It's been said that a man should not be forced to live up to his art. Benny Carter is one of the rare instances when we wonder whether the great art that a man has created can live up to him.

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.

When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play but I couldn't.

My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians.

Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.

Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.