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

Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.

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

We need more math classes, we need more science. It's the art of math and the art of science that creates all the innovation, and we have a tradition of great arts, great music.

Many heroic things happened during slavery. And remember that there was a national movement away from it even at the time. The era of Reconstruction and then the subsequent dismantling of Reconstruction sent us in a tailspin. Then we had the Civil Rights movement. Now we have our first non-white president. We have a pattern of moving apart and then coming back together throughout the history of this country. Each time, we come closer.

No particular music makes me feel nostalgic. If it's great, it just keeps me in the present moment. That level of music is like a classic story, like the Iliad-something so perfect it can never be old.

The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible.