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

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

Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all.

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.

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

Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.

Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.

I've been a massive obsessive about jazz singers all my life.

I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.

I find as much inspiration from the forerunners of jazz as I do the modern-day innovators of jazz.