Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today, just 1 week after his heavenly birthday, to honor one of the legends and icons of jazz music, the great Ira Sullivan. Ira was many things: a jazz great, an educator, a mentor, a father, a husband, and a friend of mine. I remember first meeting Ira as a jazz student at the University of Miami's Young Musicians Camp Honors Jazz Program. I remember walking in when I was very young. I think I was in the eighth or ninth grade. He asked me to play vibraphone on a jazz song. I had auditioned as a drummer, so to me that was a very foreign thing. I wasn't hip to the history of jazz vibraphone, so I felt almost like he was asking me to play timpani and play timpani on a jazz song. Either way, the next day, he came in and gave me a pair of Gary Burton mallets and told me to try playing the vibraphone to jazz. Believe it or not, I was still very confused. Either way, that decision changed my entire life. From then on, I started practicing jazz vibraphone and became very obsessed with it. Years passed, and he would always invite me to come back to perform with him in the new class he was teaching, all young people that Ira had inspired and whose lives he changed. Ira Sullivan also achieved technical skills not achieved by many, a multi-instrumentalist in the truest sense of the word, fluidly being able to play the trumpet, the saxophone, the flute, the drum set, the piano, and many other instruments.…”