Quote

You cannot help but notice that schools that take music seriously tend to be more academically successful.

Music is an element that should be part and parcel of every child's life via the education system.

I'm an advocate of music in schools. It's important to me that music is in as many schools as possible across this country and across the world. I think that it's a lost art form because kids aren't as exposed to it as maybe they used to be, or should be. I was exposed heavily to jazz and that's why I love it.

Everybody, no matter what vocation they're looking at, should add music as an essential to their curriculum. Music can be a very important part of your soul and your growth as a human being. It's so powerful.

I would like to teach music. It's weird the way they teach music in schools like Julliard these days.

Music is such an incredible tool for kids in general. They learn discipline; they learn how to express themselves. You learn math. You learn language. It's the ideal teaching tool, and that's why it's mind-boggling when any school superintendent decides that music is something we can kind of do without.

I have visited schools that have music programs and those that don't. I see the way the kids act with each other.

More than 50 percent of kids who play an instrument go on to college, yet music education programs at the inner city public schools who need them most continue to be hit hard with budget cuts.

I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.

The great thing about the arts, and especially popular music, is that it really does cut across genres and races and classes.