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So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.

II'm quite a successful musician, but I'm not sure if it's my vocation.

I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.

Man, I just feel so fortunate to be a jazz musician at all. I have a hard time thinking of it any other way. It's such a fulfilling vocation. I love it.

I always told the people at Cal Arts that if they wanted me to do Jazz studies, first of all, there couldn't be a big band within 500 miles and that I could do what I wanted to do. And they said I could.

I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

I listened to classical music. I listened to jazz. I listened to everything. And I started becoming interested in the sounds of jazz. And I went to a concert of Jazz at the Philharmonic when we lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and I saw Charlie Parker play and Billie Holiday sing and Lester Young play, and that did it. I said, 'That's what I want to do.'

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.

We are serious about our music here in Philadelphia, and jazz has meant a lot to this city.