Pastoral Resources

Once I took a bus from my home in Maryland to Philadelphia to live on the streets with some musicians for a few weeks, and then my parents sent me to boarding school at Andover to shape me up.

Quite a few musicians came to our house. And my ma took me to hear many more, hoping to encourage in me a love of music. But she wouldn't consent to my having music lessons, for she feared I might end up as she had done - unable to play except from paper.

One way and another I was having a ball - playing gigs, jamming and listening to fine musicians. Then came a crisis at home. My stepfather fell sick, and it meant I had to support the family.

I think that musicians should never forget about the intimacy of bringing two people together, and the aesthetic transference where you're almost vicariously involved in a romance between other people.

Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

Everything I do is collaborative. It's just my way. I'm really very interested in how the other musicians perceive the song.

I play music a lot but on my own mostly, so it was nice to be around other people. There was a certain sense a relief in the physical act of just playing and being with other musicians.

I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.

It was physically difficult, adjusting to wheelchair life, but I remember a great relief and happiness that I was finally getting somewhere, finding musicians to work with that were sympathetic.

In theory, I'd like to work in a group. But the group I'd like to work in, all the musicians in them are long since dead.

There's no difference in a lot of people's minds between good musicians and popular musicians.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

For about seven years. I really like it there. There are a lot of great musicians. The scene is very open. A lot of stuff going on. People's ears are really open, they are not closed. A lot of scenes here, people just get tunnel vision and are into one thing.

Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like.

I don't control it at all. It's all up to the musicians in the group. They control it. They make all the cues, and they tell me what they want, and then I act like a mirroring device so that everyone can see what the cues are.

Well, in Japan, I have got a group of musicians that I have worked with a lot, that concentrate just on the hardcore stuff, say, that Naked City has been working on. We have like a repertoire of sixty songs now.