As a kid, I used to go see all the jazz players, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespe.

First, I'm trying to edit down about 7 hours of material which I made prior to the Cop days and find some way to get it out. This stuff is pretty out there, mostly sonic collages and tape manipulations.

And when that's working, the sum can be greater than the parts.

I do remember being in high school and trying to go to an Outlaws concert, but I was too drunk and ended up in trouble with the police at some truck stop on 95 in Connecticut.

And I definitely have an affinity with the piano.

For electronica music, David Linton has been doing this series called Unity Gain, which is pretty cool.

Yes, I was forced to take piano lessons for 8 years as a child.

I like to think that my finest hour is still ahead of me, so I can look forward rather than look backward.

But that's something that I like about scoring film: it makes me reach out of the parameters of my self, it requires me to do things musically that I wouldn't normally do left to my own devices.

And I think that I'd be a natural for scoring horror movies.

Also, differences of opinion can be creatively stimulating as well as frustrating.

When I recorded Contra la Puerta, I never really thought out doing the material live. Mostly because I haven't really seen any electronic music performed live in an interesting way.

In scoring, I usually start with a sound or group of sounds, searching out what feels right.

And I don't know where I'm heading. I mean, I've got a pretty good idea of what I want in life.

But in my college years it got to the point where my friends and I didn't do anything without consuming a massive amount of alcohol before we went anywhere or did anything, and you know that.

I don't think I really know just how cool Satan really was when I was in Junior High School. Now, thanks to Marilyn Manson, it's no longer a secret.

So, through playing with Cop I realized that there is a potentially interested audience out in the world.

But Contra la Puerta was done mostly in the opposite way, starting with sounds and melodies.

I'm from all over the Northeast.

I actually went to film school and was making experimental films for a short time, so it wasn't such a leap.

But things can happen in a band, or any type of collaboration, that would not otherwise happen.

As a kid, I used to go see all the jazz players, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespe.

If the finest hour is now, then I'll always be in it.

I think that one of the strengths of Cop Shoot Cop lay in the different, and at times, clashing personalities, Ideally, I want to have both ways of working in my life.

I guess professionally it began when Hal Hartley used some music of mine in his film The Unbelievable Truth.

Then I took 8 years of French Horn, first jazz, and then classical.

I grew up outside of DC, New York state, and Connecticut.

Unfortunately, however, I have too many desires to make a good Buddhist.

I'm just like you, only I'm different because I'm me.

With Frat House, at times I needed to make music that would reflect what these fraternity brothers might actually listen to, but still keep it within the realm of a score; it still had to lead the viewer through the scene, or just help create the mood.

I've had a lot of highs in my life and a lot of lows, some pivotal experiences, and in ways I feel like I've already lived a couple of lives.

The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

Humans are imperfect. That's one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We're on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.

I hate Stanley Clark, but I have to admit he's playing Jazz whether I like it or not.

I have to plead basic ignorance of most new jazz artists here.

If one takes all the styles in jazz harmonically from the earliest beginnings to the latest experiments, he still has a rather limited scope when compared to the rest of music in the world.

I don't know who's 18 years old today that, 20 years hence, is going to be a jazz fan.

I don't like freedom jazz - I think it's void of roots and void of foundation.

Jazz needs the help. It's the more sophisticated music. All the other music is on the TV, but jazz isn't.

I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?

Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise.

I still love the whole history of jazz. The old things sound better than ever.

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.