One of the safest places to be in the world is the stage.
When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key.
When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn't as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything.
What's interesting about a person without problems?
I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.
Listening is more important than anything else because that's what music is. Somebody is playing something and you're receiving it. It is sending and receiving.
I still prefer the bebop of the '40s. The very stuff I started out with is still the best to me. I have come full circle.
I never feel more useful than when I'm making my kids a bowl of soup.
Press on! Don't let yourselves be robbed of hope. Understood?
Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully.
My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats.