You Don't Rehearse Jazz To Death To

You Know, When I'm Playing, I Think Of Myself In Front Of The Wailing Wall With A Saxophone In My Hands, And I'm Davening, I'm Really Telling It To The Wall.

My Life Is Music, And In Some Vague, Mysterious And Subconscious Way, I Have Always Been Driven By A Taut Inner Spring Which Has Propelled Me To Almost Compulsively Reach For Perfection In Music, Often - In Fact, Mostly - At The Expense Of Everything Else In My Life.

You Don't Rehearse Jazz To Death To Get The Camera Angles.

When I Got This Saxophone, It Became A Religion. There Wasn't Tv, There Wasn't Much Money, And There Was Just A Real Dedication.... I Never Thought Of It As An Art. It Was Just Work That I Loved. Not Just Work, But Work That I Loved. I Loved It So Much, I Would Play It If Nobody Listened To It. Any Jazz Musician, If There's Nobody Around To Listen, Would Play Just For The Sheer Joy Of Improvising Music.

I Never Have Any Trouble Playing Anything I Can Think Of. The Trouble Is In Thinking Of What To Play.