Jazz Music Creates So Many Phenomenal Figures.

This Is Our Bandstand. If You Don't Want To Play, Get Up Off The Instrument And Leave.

I Believed In Studying Just Because I Knew Education Was A Privilege. It Was The Discipline Of Study, To Get Into The Habit Of Doing Something That You Don't Want To Do.

I Travel Up And Down The Country And I've Been All Around The Middle Of America For Many Years. Middle America Is Not One Big Mass Of People With A Proverbial Beer In Its Hand, Keeping The Country Down. That Is Not My Experience Of It And I Don't Labor Under That Misconception. And We Have A Long Tradition Of Coming Together Through Music In Our Country.

In Jazz, Improvisation Isn't A Matter Of Just Making Any Ol' Thing Up. Jazz, Like Any Language, Has Its Own Grammer And Vocabulary. There's No Right Or Wrong, Just Some Choices That Are Better Than Others.

When I Came To New York, To Brooklyn, I Met Alvin Ailey And Stanley Crouch And August Wilson. They Were Always Putting Things In A Philosophical Context. All The Great Jazz Musicians Did, Too. There Was Always A Sub-context To What They Were Saying About Music Even Though They Would Be Very Down Home And Earthy. So I Started To Develop, In Addition To My Power And Ability To Simply Hear, A Way To Place Myself In A Time.