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Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened.

There have been so few decent films involving Negroes that right away everybody expects every film to do everything. But when you make a flick, there are maybe two things you're trying to put into that flick. You can put the other things in another time.

When I was studying... there weren't any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have become known as a black classical pianist.

When I think of the trials and tribulations that black men go through in America and that black artists went through, I feel very privileged.

In the long, nonillustrious history of white people pilfering African American culture, have I just perpetrated that? I'm motivated by a love for the music and by a love of the performances, and I really hope I haven't done anything bad.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

The Negroes have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts. They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are remarkably acute.

Without a doubt, the majority of historical period dramas tend to be told from a certain perspective. At least in America, black people have some visibility in period dramas, although it's usually in the form of slaves or servitude.

But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.