When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.
When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all.
If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die.
You can work on the saxophone alone, but ultimately you must perform with others.
If you listen to Louis Armstrong from 1929, you will never hear anything better than that really, and you will never hear anything more free than that.
It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up.
It starts with a single sound. If there's something in that sound, then it's worth continuing.
I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years, and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you, the only limit is the imagination.
The more original something is, the more of a threat it seems until the people catch up with it. That happened with Thelonious Monk. It happened with anybody who is really original.
The saxophone is a very interesting machine, but I'm more interested in music.
Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention.
The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity.
Risk is at the heart of jazz. Every note we play is a risk.
The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano.
Play difficult and interesting things. If you play boring things, you risk losing your appetite. Saxophone can be tedious with too much of the same.