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The beauty of jazz is that it's malleable. People are addressing it to suit their own personalities.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

The cool thing is that jazz is really a wonderful example of the great characteristics of Buddhism and great characteristics of the human spirit. Because in jazz we share, we listen to each other, we respect each other, we are creating in the moment. At our best, we're non-judgmental.

In the early days of jazz, it was ensemble music: everybody playing all together. Nobody really stood out.

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.

We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.

It's always fun to talk about jazz.

For me, when I grew up playing music, I played music in church and people were shouting and having a big time, and church wasn't something where it was subdued. If you played something, you brought it to church with you.

I had not been in the jazz environment, having been brought up in the church. But once I got to New York, and I was signed to perform at The Village Gate and the Vanguard and clubs like that, and these - the Vanguard was one of the most elite, if not the most elite, jazz club out there.