It wasn't until I got out of the Army and I heard Coltrane's record 'Coltrane,' when he was doing 'Inch Worm' and 'Out of This World,' that I thought, 'Oh my God, you can do that?' And then I thought, 'OK, I better go back and listen to Eric Dolphy a bit.' And then I said, 'Hmm, I better pull out these Ornette Coleman records.'
I remember times when the whole music scene was just flourishing.
What I'm after is a composed music that will sound like improvised music when improvisors play it. You shouldn't be able to tell what parts are being improvised and what parts were written out beforehand; it should sound like the same music.
You have to know composition to be a good improviser.
To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.
My central quest was to have a piece played on the saxophone sound like more than one instrument, exploiting different registers and wide interval leaps.
This is what really makes real jazz musicians: people coming out with their own voice.
Man, I used to go around and think, 'Oh my God, what must it be like to be going down the street, and someone asks you, 'What's your name?' and the reply would be, 'John Coltrane.' I couldn't imagine what that would be like.
I've always been interested in shaping music in odd ways, with odd riffs and that's been probably something that I've continued on with my studies with improvisation as I'm working with people.
