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.

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.

I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy.

I got my first trumpet when I was six years old, from Al Hirt. My father was playing in Al Hirt's band at that time.

In the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra we play such a diversity of music, with 10 arrangers in the band, we don't really worry about whether it's contemporary or not.

What, other than injustice, could be the reason that the displaced citizens of New Orleans cannot be accommodated by the richest nation in the world?

Thank the good Lord for a job.