What we're doing is like the apprenticeship system. My experiences with people like Miles Davis and Elvin Jones when I was coming up - that was like the equivalent of me giving my knowledge to the young students today. So in the line of passing on the tradition, and jazz is so much of an oral tradition, it has to go from person to person. Even if I didn't like jazz education on any other level, I'd feel that I had to do that. But the other thing is that I believe that jazz is a wonderful, positive experience for young people.
Jazz is really a great way to involve kids in something very heavy.
It's philosophically a very deep music I think. It's real art, it's attempting to really communicate with each other and with the audience. So I think that it's a positive thing that by teaching jazz, regardless of whether the students will pursue it to become professionals or notable in their field, it's just a very positive thing for somebody to understand. And that positiveness is what makes jazz education attractive to me. The point is often made that there are too many musicians being turned out every year by the jazz schools and there isn't work for all of these people.