You know, the whole philosophy of ad hoc combinations has its strengths and its weaknesses.

If I think about the way I was drawn into the music, it was much more by recordings than by live performances.

I think the whole question of meaning in music is difficult enough even if you hear me playing live right now in the same room! What I mean and what you take from it may be two quite different things anyway.

In a certain sense, aspects of my solo playing were developed in order to test the theory about how long particular elements could be, as parts of so-called free improvisations.

When I'm working, I try to be serious and rest where I can. I just mark in rehearsals. I still train. I warm up. And I still take lessons from this unbelievable teacher in New York, Joan Lader. I try to be stretched and ready to go.

I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.

I did not study science at school until I was 13, when I was totally turned on by a seemingly dreary old teacher who suddenly, unannounced, manufactured a huge explosion in the middle of a totally boring monologue. From then on, all of his class wanted to make explosions.

The business of a scientific school is the dissemination of useful knowledge, and this is a noble enterprise and indispensable withal; society can not exist unless it goes on.