The guitar chose me.
A person should design the way he makes a living around how he wishes to make a life.
When I sing, I play in my mind; the minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.
It’s up to the individual to keep up with the times.
I guess what everyone wants more than anything else is to be loved. And to know that you loved me for my singing is too much for me. Forgive me if I don’t have all the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.
Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.
I went through a lot of mental pains and anguish about choosing between jazz and classical. I realized that where I functioned was where I should be, and where I functioned was in jazz, so that was it.
If a song’s about something I’ve experienced or that could’ve happened to me it’s good. But if it’s alien to me, I couldn’t lend anything to it. Because that’s what soul is all about.
Using drugs didn’t help me play, all it did was hang me up for 15 years.
I’m an experimenter. It’s rich because every album I’ve done, except for a couple of techno-y records, are different. Really you’ve got to hand it to the Fender Strat, because there are songs in that guitar. It’s a tool of great inspiration and torture at the same time because it’s forever sitting there challenging you to find something else in it, but it is there if you really search.
I want the music to connect to people; reach people every time I perform.
Risk is at the heart of Jazz. Every note we play is a risk.
Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.
Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.
One of the advantages of growing older is you learn what to leave out.
Typically I go in the studio and whatever I’m contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don’t come in with lyrics… I just go in and let it happen.
