"What has really helped me is being part of communities. Communities have the power to inspire and motivate us, and I am so thankful for the several communities that are part of my life that have helped to inspire and shape who I am. Specifically, my friends in the the music community have been a huge blessing. From seeing and listening to what other people are doing, and being inspired by what they’re doing, they have motivated me to get out there and work to get better and move forward. We cannot do without friendship, we are not islands unto ourselves. We need each other. One of the most amazing values of friendship is that we can help each other out and give each other a little nudge. I would just say that I am most thankful for are the relationships I have with other horn players, other musicians, and just other people that I know professionally. I just can’t stress it enough. The friendships and relationships I have with people in the community have motivated me to stick with it.”

"Right now I’m in a nice place where all I’m doing is music. I’m loving it, and this what I wanted. Yes, when I was younger I thought I’m going to be the next Christian Lindberg, I’m gonna solo and all this stuff, but I never put in Christian Lindberg hours. I never had his talent either. But, I’ve found a niche with education, which is something I’m very into and very passionate about. A lot of it too is what gets you going and what excites you. If you like it, and someone is willing to pay you for it, you win life. It’s that simple."

"Success is irrelevant. We do as well as we can, and that’s the most important thing whether it’s deemed successful or not. We need to be positive about what we’re doing and sometimes what other people deem as an enormous success can just be a stepping stone on the path of what you ultimately want to do. Motivation, discipline, drive, inspiration, they all tie into that and you cannot have success without those things, but success is a really very much in the eye of the beholder. An elementary school teacher who has to handle 25 kids and can survive to the end of the day, they are a success. My dentist who took out my wisdom teeth without damaging nerves, I think that is an enormous success. As musicians, we can get really carried away with what success means. We think that playing in a big orchestra means we’re really important, and in our field, sure, what we do is really important. But, there’s a lot more things going on in the world than playing music. Again, what we do is important, especially to our community, but we don’t need to get too carried away with how important we feel."

"I left my family and friends in Valencia and moved to a different country, and I had to learn a whole new language and way of speaking. I struggle with living here, visas, immigration stuff, finances, and sometimes I think, “is it worth all the trouble I’m going through, to have left those I love?” I get work, I’m happy, and I love what I do, but sometimes I feel like I should be doing better. I left everything and music is what I’m working for. But, I only think these things when I am being melancholy. My overall experience has been so positive, just sometimes, I am a little melancholy. It’s the only struggle I can think of, but then again it’s not really a struggle. I can sum it up as we always would like more, but we should be happy and thankful on some level because this life is worth it, absolutely."

"The thing is that a lot of the most creative people have discipline. Jerry Seinfeld, for instance, is a hugely successful comedian, but he talks about when he was first starting out in that he would just write one joke a day, and regardless of whether or not it was terrible or pure gold, he would just write something. He talks about keeping a calendar, and every day he wrote a joke he would cross it off in a red X. So maybe they were all terrible jokes at first, but they build up and eventually he got better and better at it. I mean, when you see him everyone just thinks he’s so talented. But, no. For me personally, the more I interact with good professionals the more I just realize that yeah, they’re creative and they may be divinely inspired, but all of them have just such an incredible work ethic. They all work super hard. So if people think having discipline is a bad thing in the artistic world, I mean, I’m not sure how well they’re going to do."