I'm not an academically trained musician. I think that there's a great place for academic training in music, but ultimately the real lessons you learn are through the sounds that you hear and the way you interpret those sounds. I mean, music isn't just the notes that you play. Music is a set of relationships. You know, music is personality.
Music is communication.
And what Berkeley High taught me is that you have to have that kind of rapport with your fellow musicians, off the bandstand as well as on. Redman's mother raised her son alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Berkeley. His father is Dewey Redman, also a highly acclaimed jazz saxophonist. Occasionally, he and his son perform together. I did not grow up with my father.