I think my intention was there, and my love for the music was apparent. And there are very few singers who get up and desire to take the kinds of risks that jazz musicians routinely need to be taking.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If you don't already know about jazz music, how would you be exposed? How would get an opportunity to find out if it spoke to you? If you get exposed to it enough, you might find a taste for it.
Man, I just feel so fortunate to be a jazz musician at all. I have a hard time thinking of it any other way. It's such a fulfilling vocation. I love it.
Possibly, I should have been a jazz singer from the beginning.
The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous.
I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.
I've been a massive obsessive about jazz singers all my life.
I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.
Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.
I am not a jazz singer. I wouldn't place myself on that footing. I wouldn't even enter that arena.
That's the thing: There are so many art songs in jazz. It's a much more rich experience for the singer than people think.