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I started out trying to play more straight-ahead jazz. I went to Berklee in the early '60s when it was a brand new school, and so there was no fusion music. There wasn't a lot of mixing together of different kinds of music at that time, so jazz was kind of pure jazz.

I started out playing traditional jazz, and I still do: I love standards, I love the music. But it must move on, and it must live and breathe, and continue to grow, and continue to change, and continue to mesh with other music - all that kind of stuff. Jazz can be on the playground too, you know.

I was totally into jazz in my teens.

I wanted to play some more grown-up music - jazz.

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

Growing up, I was very much interested in jazz music.

At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music.

In the last few years I've been listening to jazz more than anything else. I listen to a lot of world music and experimental here and there.

I don't think I've ever been true to jazz. There's always a kind of jazz element to what I do. There are a very few genres that I haven't tried out, really, in what I've been doing. As a jazz musician, you can kind of mess about with things with a certain level of musicianship, which helps.

I got into trad jazz, then modern jazz, then avant-garde jazz, between the ages of 16 to 18.