Actually, I mainly play the cornet, the trumpet's forgotten sibling in the brass family. It's a subtle difference in timbre and articulation, but a real one. Nonetheless, it has the same basic technique, register, and role in the ensemble as the trumpet, and they look pretty similar (though the cornet is a little smaller and more graceful, in my biased opinion), so obviously they usually get lumped together.

Anyway, whether trumpet or cornet, the instrument is a notoriously unreliable ally, as a player you've got to embrace the uncertainty. All you've got is your air, your lips, and three valves to try and make an infinity of notes and tones and sounds. The trumpet players that move me the most (whether heroes like Lee Morgan, Miles Davis, and Don Cherry, or contemporaries like Nate Wooley, Cuong Vu, and Amir ElSaffar) let it all hang out, they take risks and inevitably sometimes they miss or crack a note, but that sense of adventure is always in their playing. I try to capture that aesthetic as a player, but also as a composer. I want to create work where my musicians can take similar risks in navigating the structure of the music. As a cornet player, as a composer, and as a listener, I much prefer an adventurous failure that reveals real artistic ambition and human vulnerability, over a safe, competent, but boring success.

When he was in his 80s, Bill Dixon once told me "I learn something new about the trumpet every day." Any musical instrument is a lifelong commitment, but brass instruments (as mentioned above) demand a special kind of dedication. Just to maintain one's chops takes an hour or two of rudiments and exercises each day, and one can always improve on the instrument, there are always new technical hurdles to jump and concepts to explore. Of course, there are times I wish I could run away from it and hide. But when I'm at my most positive, the daily relationship to the cornet takes on a kind of meditative quality; the time becomes a chance to let go all the other troubles of life and business, and reconnect with my body and my horn.

My very first musical mentor wasn't a trumpet or cornet player, but he dealt with weightier brass: bass trombonist and tubaist Bill Lowe. We've been working together for over twenty years now, and I'm still learning from him; these days he also does me the honor of playing in my sextet.

I got the chance to work closely with Bill Dixon on several projects before his death. He was a true philosopher of sound. His approach to the instrument, to composing, to bandleading, inform my musical decisions every day.

More recently, I've gotten the chance to spend some quality time with guys like Wadada Leo Smith, Bobby Bradford, and Baikida Carroll. They are some of my heroes on the instrument, and the fact that guys of their generations, after fifty years of music-making, are still so creative is deeply inspiring to me.