SUNDAY

BRUNCH
"If I could only do one thing, I'd go to Brennan's for Sunday brunch. When I walk in there, it feels like the calm before the storm. It feels like, This is the last moment I'm going to have before I feel like I'm going to physically explode from eating so much food. It's a nice feeling of anticipation. Every time I go, I get the same thing. I get the turtle soup with sherry. Then, I get the eggs Hussarde, which is almost like eggs Benedict, except it has a white wine sauce, too. It's unbelievable. Then I get bananas Foster. The whole brunch takes you three hours to eat, and you want to just sleep the rest of the day. But it's the best food."           

ONE MEMORABLE NIGHT IN NEW ORLEANS

"There are a lot of great musicians from New Orleans. When I was probably 15, I was studying with Ellis Marsalis, and Ellis would play at Snug Harbor all the time. Back then, he would play there a couple of times a week and a lot of his students would play there, too. One day he said, 'I need you to sub for me with James Black.' James Black was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, jazz drummers to ever come out of New Orleans. I was excited because I had never played with him. The first song I called was 'Magnolia Triangle,' which James wrote. It's in an odd meter, 5/4 time, which isn't necessarily that hard to play, it's just not the most common time. I remember the bass player looking at me like I was crazy because James was such a manipulator of rhythm that if you played one of these odd-time meters with him, there was a good chance that he would throw you off and you would get lost in the song. And that's exactly what happened. He threw us off, we didn't know where we were, and I think he became frustrated with our inability to keep up with him, and he left after that song. He just walked to the bar, got a beer, and left the gig! We ended up playing the rest of the night as a duo without a drummer. That story just tells you that the music is hard-core down there. People are very serious about the arts. They are really serious about music, and the musicians are serious about what they do. When I was coming up, you felt an immense amount of pressure to keep this high level of music going."