It was a sacrifice. In New York, I formed a group right away. We rehearsed at a Harlem public school at 133rd Street. Anthony Braxton and Bob Stewart showed up and any other musicians who had just hit town. Thankfully, it was a very fertile time and there were a lot of them.
Musicians are a strange lot.
If it's challenging and fresh, they'll play for free. I never had to pay anybody. We called it Studio Rivbea after me and my wife, Beatrice. It was more for woodshedding at first, not really a performance space, but when the Newport Festival came to town in '68 and ignored all the new musicians we decided to start our own festival. Europeans heard about us and would show up - five languages being spoken, two hundred people in the space.