"The album is about my time period when I quit music to when I started RHP. All of us at one point in life feel like we want to throw in the towel, but even in those breaking points, there are aspects of us that are unbreakable. I’ve gone through some really hard things in my life, some recent, some in the past, and the fact that I’m able to still go on with my day still surprises me. But, I feel that one of my defining unbreakable characteristic is that I will always fight for what I want; I cannot change that about myself, and quite frankly I don’t want to. Even if that rubs people the wrong way, I found my resilience in fighting the standards that I couldn’t fit into. So, in RHP and in “Unbreakable”, I want it to be representative of the power and strength of the unbreakable parts of me."

"When I decided to be a hornist, there was no guarantee; I just had to get up in the morning and start practicing. When I got the opportunity to go and play in China, I of course was nervous about it, but I did it anyways. If you want something, you just go do it. Performance anxiety is awful, and all of us have been affected by it, but we’re all just going to have to face it at some point. Either view it as a negative, or use it as another step in the process to going after what you’re passionate about."

"I want every one of my students to know that I’m not just there to teach them horn. I really do care about them as a whole person, not just as horn projects. The beauty of the private teacher/student relationship is that you get that one-on-one time with them, and you get to know them as people. You are more than just a professor, you are an advisor of life, and just like I have lots of things going on in my life, my students have lots of things going on in their lives. So whether I help them become more organized so they get through their schoolwork, or help them determine what their best practice routine is so they feel ready to play and not like they’re going to miss every note, it’s all important. Being able to be well balanced and get sleep at night, doing laundry on time, accomplishing smaller things is going to help someone’s playing; it’s not separate from horn playing. So to answer your question, I really am proud of everything that they’re doing. The other thing that I want everyone to walk away with is that regardless of what they become in life they have to be good people. They have to contribute to their communities, they have to contribute to the world, they have to be good stewards of all the gifts and resources that they’ve been given and give it back. My job is helping them to grow to become better people of the world."

"Lately, I’ve been asking myself “how am I right now?”, intellectually, rationally, emotionally, how am I doing? Which one of my senses, intelligence or emotion or whatever, which one of those things is out of whack right now and how do I take care of that? I have a friend who does a lot of journaling, and I must have started 1,000 journals in my life and have never keep them up. But for her I think that really helps her to reflect outside of the feedback loop of her mind, to step back and asses. Musicians talk about how when they want to get better, they have to listen to themselves. Well, listen to yourself then, and not just recordings, listen to your thoughts. You have to strip away the walls and the barriers that are in between you and your output. You just have to be objectively comfortable, assess yourself, and sometimes that’s a hard look in the mirror. Pinpoint what you’re feeling bad about, and then take actual, real life steps towards changing that. That’s how I combat feeling bad, I try to think of something I can immediately do to move in the right direction. Action always seems to get me out of that rut."

"First and foremost you have to learn to love yourself. There’s that cliché “you can’t love someone until you love yourself”, but there are a lot more things that won’t happen besides maybe not being happy in a relationship. If you don’t love yourself, how can you be excited about anything good that happens to you? So that’s definitely the first step people need to take, is to believe that you do deserve it, you are worth succeeding, you are worth getting what you want. You’re not being selfish, you just have to convince yourself that you deserve the success you want. The second thing is to prepare. Prepare, prepare, prepare, for whatever it is, hone your craft, whatever it may be. For me, playing three hour gigs conditioned my voice and made it stronger, made it comfortable for me to perform in front of people. Constantly work for what you want, prepare yourself, and treat it all as if that goal is right around the corner. For me, when I was about to release the single, I made sure that my Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and website were all ready to go before releasing my single. I made sure that I put up the album artwork on all of those sites, I made the little banner that has the link to where you can pre-order my music. You just have to put your ducks in a row, you have to prepare yourself as if what you want is right around the corner, because it might be, like it was for me. Had I not gone a few days before and done all that, and then put out that video that went viral, that would have sucked! I would have been backtracking like crazy and freaking out. But I set it up and prepared ahead of time, I was proactive instead of reactive. Doing that will make you ready for any success that inevitably will come your way."