Quote

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.

I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.

Even though the music I make gathers influences from all over the place, I feel that the core of what I do comes from the jazz tradition. In terms of improvisation, interaction, feel and overall concept, Jazz is my main source of information and inspiration.

Me as an artist, I've ventured off into doing all types of music. I'll do a jazz album, you know what I mean.

Jazz is very much a part of my life. I work with the Thelonious Monk Institute and do the artwork for their program every year.

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.

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation.

Growing up, I was very much interested in jazz music.

I kept on buying records and listening to them. Finally, I was able to hear the relationship between the jazz improvisers' solos and the underlying structure that it's based on, the chord progression. That was pretty easy to do in the swing era, y'know, when jazz was, like, pop music, you know. It had made the charts and everything like that.