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People like Art Blakey and Buddy Rich, you look at them playing music, and it's just like looking at a heavy metal drummer. I mean, they're playing with the same amount of ferocity. It's not to say all jazz is like that.

The beauty of jazz is that it's malleable. People are addressing it to suit their own personalities.

Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.

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.

In my view a jazz musician is a great musician.

Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.

I don't play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word 'jazz' only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that's fine.

If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.

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.