Quotes from Roscoe Mitchell

To be a good improviser, you have to study composition as a parallel. Because what improvisation is, on a high level, is spontaneous composition.

I feel I'm most successful when I'm playing a concert, and it doesn't necessarily seem like I'm playing a saxophone but am coming off more like an orchestra or something like that.

I just consider myself a student, trying to learn more about it.

I noticed that when it came time to improvise, my students would often make mistakes.

I feel that in order to learn as much about music as I would like to learn, I would need more than one lifetime.

You can work on music a few lifetimes.