Best trumpet: Mike Vax, an alumnus of the Kenton Band, who plays every style with a bright cutting edge, throwing in bop riffs here and there.
As a kid, I used to go see all the jazz players, Oscar Peterson, Stan Kenton, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespe.
I have, over the years brought an enormous number of plays to television starting obviously with Nicholas Nickelby and then things like Angels In America or in Wit with Emma Thompson and Mike Nichols. So, yes, I do find that very interesting and I'm sure that down the road there will be plays that I'll want to do that way.
I can play anything - piano, drums, guitar, harp - I can even play a trumpet through another trumpet.
And my dad wanted me to play the trumpet because that's what he liked. His idol was Louis Armstrong. My dad thought my teeth came together in a way that was perfect for playing the trumpet.
I'm not an amazing trumpet player. It's mostly smoke and mirrors. You shake the trumpet and it starts to vibrate in a ridiculous drunken way, or you flop notes at the right time and you don't have to play stuff that would take seven years to learn.
Many critics always saw and heard that my style comes from Roy Eldridge, which is true. But for many things, not only how to play the trumpet but the way to choose the notes, how to play them and how to phrase all of them, I took that from Sweets [Edison]. He really brought something new to the trumpet.
I try to swim once or twice a week. I basically hold my breath for, like, 12 laps, down and back, to kind of expand my lungs so that I can have better breathing when it comes down to two-minute drives where you've got to play a lot of plays all in one series and you're hurrying up.
I've never been a big soloist; I just put in what needs to be there. I'm more of a rhythm player who plays lead - or tries to play lead.
Mike is the craziest person. He's scattered; he's all over the place. When you hold him down and tell him, 'This is what you're doing,' he's fantastic. But you have to hold him down. Like, when he had to write his verse for 'Hello Nasty,' we had to take his phone away to get him to do it.
When I was a kid, I used to listen to my Emerson radio late at night under the covers. I started by listening to jazz in the late 1940s and then vocal harmony groups like the Four Freshmen, the Modernaires and the Hi-Lo's. I loved Stan Kenton's big band - with those dark chords and musicians who could swing cool with individual sounds.
I like Stan [Getz], because he has so much patience, the way he plays those melodies - other people can't get nothing out of a song, but he can, which takes a lot of imagination.
I don't just play the trumpet because it's something that resonates with me: I play the trumpet because I realize it's a means to help free a lot of people that ain't free.
As a drummer, you can't fake the instrument. A trumpet, you could be blowing air; a person who plays the trumpet could still say, "Oh, those aren't the right hand motions." On drums, you have to actually hit them. You can't fake it.
To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was.
I've always been a music fan. I played trumpet. When I was in 4th grade, we were getting demos from the music teacher about different instruments we could play, and I said I wanted to play the trumpet right away. It was easy: it just had three valves.