Quote

Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

What I believe to be jazz is constructed and improvised music which is in the air right now. But I don't think that's most people's definition of jazz, you know? We don't know what we're talking about, because we don't know the definition.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.

When somebody uses a word as a genre distinction, all it really does is trigger certain experiences, or music, that somebody's been exposed to. But that's an individual thing; there's no sort of universal understanding of what jazz is.

Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.

Well, jazz is to me, a complete lifestyle. It's bigger than a word. It's a much bigger force than just something that you can say. It's something that you have to feel. It's something that you have to live.

Some people say that if you do anything other than a straight-ahead groove, that it's not jazz. But that kind of labeling is wrong. Music is what it is; if it sounds good, it sounds good.