Don't Bullshit' Just Play.

Through Improvisation, Jazz Teaches You About Yourself. And Through Swing, It Teaches You That Other People Are Individuals Too. It Teaches You How To Coordinate With Them.

Jazz Comes From Our Way Of Life, And Because It's Our National Art Form, It Helps Us To Understand Who We Are.

I Remember When I Wrote A Piece, "blood On The Fields," It Was A While Ago, It Was About Slavery And About Two Characters, And I Studied So Much Of Music, I Would Always Go Back To The Original Documents, And As Much As I Can Get Original Chants And Slave Chants And Different Type Of Beats And Rhythms And Ring Shout.

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.

I Had To Figure Out How To Survive In New York, And Most Of My Time Was Occupied In Getting An Apartment And Getting Money. A Lot Of Older Jazz Guys Looked Out For Me And Found Me Gigs And Places To Stay.