To me, Pat Metheny is without question the most important artist in jazz of our lifetime.
Unless you come to town playing like Ryan Kisor, Greg Gisbert or Nicholas Payton, you need to have a work ethic. Your work ethic has to be on point.
There I am with Bruckner and Bernstein . . . I was pretty freaked out.
With opera cues, you don’t have to count everything. It’ll be like 85 bars rest, 144 bars rest and then ‘canon explosion.’ That’s a pretty obvious cue.
It’s like looking at the Dead Sea Scrolls when you look at the paper with Thad Jones hand.
Richard Galliano, the world’s greatest accordionist, hired me to play piano and accordion, which obviously made me the world’s second greatest accordionist!
You can create a lot of great opportunities for yourself as a musician if you just make stuff.
Any profession where the supply is much greater than the demand, you have to have tremendous persistence and desire to be really great.
In the old days, we'd have copying parties. . . you copy violin 1, you copy violin 2.
As much as I love Thad Jones, he did everything right except leaving the band in a healthy way.
