Jazz Music Is The Power Of Now.

I Get So Much From Having The Opportunity To Interface With The Younger People And To Bring Information To Them And To Represent Our Culture And Our Way Of Life. The Feeling And The Warmth And The Love, It's Unbelievable. The Type Of Exchange That Goes On Between Students And Teachers Or Visiting People Who Are Doing Master Classes, And Not Just When They're Musicians. Even General Classes, When The Students Are Not Necessarily Musicians.

Music Is Always For The Listener, But The First Listener Is Always The Musician

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.

There Really Have Only Ever Been A Few People In Each Generation Who Step Out, Are Willing To Put Themselves On The Line, And Risk Everything For Their Beliefs.

I Worry More About The Marketing That's Taken Hold Since The 70s. The Jazz Era, The Swing Era, Those Were Huge. Entire Decades Were Named For Music. In The 1940s - After World War Ii - Changes In Taxation, Ballrooms Closing, People Moving To The Suburbs, And The Onset Of Target Marketing And The Confusion Of Commerce With Art Caused Some Things To Happen As A Result That Have Taken Us Away From Jazz And What Jazz Offers Us.