The real power of Jazz is that a group of people can come together and create improvised art and negotiate their agendas... and that negotiation is the art

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.

Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements.

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.

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

Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician

Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.