There are other dimensions... everywhere. Just open a new door. If you have enough imagination to see the door then you can open the door. It's everything around you. So you can go from a sad mood to the opposite in one second. You just have to open windows and doors and everything around you... consciousness. We learn in this society that we have to follow a pattern. If you go out of that pattern, then maybe they say that you are crazy. But there is a way to live a great life. Don't fall in the dark. Don't go crazy. You're not doing drugs or things like that, you're just being positive. You can see different perspectives of the same problem. Everything has a positive way. Everything has a negative way as well. But if you focus on the positive, it will be great, it will work, for music, for friendship, for all these kind of things that I enjoy now. I like it, I've been sharing for the last 6 years With Doc Severinsen and I can see his philosophy. He taught me about this and I start doing it and going in different directions. You can change your mental state very fast. He's 85 and full of life. He's amazing the way he lives every day and every moment. So if he's like that can you imagine what young people can be like, when we are prepared to die any minute, without regrets. Just enjoy it. I played at Carnegie Hall with Doc Severinsen. We played with the symphony. It was a full house. It was amazing.

I played 6 concerts this year with the Minnesota Symphony. They invited me to solo with a partial symphony orchestra. I played a couple of concerts there and then we went to Florida and played in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clear Water. Doc and I played in San Diego with the symphony orchestra. Then Doc, who is getting back into big band, invited me on to play right in front with all these horns... an amazing trip. We played two arrangements by Django Reinhardt. Everything is written down. I had to practice a lot... to sit down there with all these great musicians you know Ernie Watts, all these great players.

 

My friend, Bob Stern, a violin player is coming from New York to spend two months, February and March, here. He has a studio in Montauk. I spent a week with him there. It was amazing, beautiful, right by the beach. We just walk every morning coffee then sit in his studio for hours. We're making an album. He has a Stephane Grappelli kind of sound. This next year is a good year. We're going to New Braunfels, Texas to start the 4th and the 5th. Then in July I'm going to Quebec with Gabriel. Some people from the Quebec Festival heard us play here, so we're going to play there the 19th and 20th. That will be my first time in Canada. I always wanted to go. Before that in May we play in Phoenix and Tyler, Texas and then Austin 5 de mayo with the symphony orchestra and Houston.

Playing with an orchestra they send the music to us and to the orchestra. They practice for a week, by themselves. We show up the day of the concert normally early morning, do a sound check and then we have one rehearsal for a couple hours. We go through the entire concert and then we're ready to go. We keep it spontaneous, fresh. It's difficult to do that, but I've been learning from Doc to keep it spontaneous with all the orchestras, because otherwise sometimes it could be not artistic; they just sit down there because they have to to get the check. But Doc puts them into this mood that they really like the music, they enjoy it. It works. I've been learning a lot with Doc. This is one of the very things, surprise all the time, because if you keep the same energy level it doesn't work, it's just another gig. Every gig should be like it's going to be the last one in your life, so you have to play good. You just have to pick exactly where you put it; they wake up.