The Blues is never old.
You have to understand the styles and it’s good to study those that came before us.
Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath.
I was always exposed to music. Mom and dad would have the radio on constantly.
Man, as long as people want to hear Jazz, I’ll give it to them.
I started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.
I’ve had those people very interested in my writing. Since I think of myself as a composer, I feel really good. I’ve had lots of guys call me up. I’ve gotten two or three commissions to write things. I’ve written lots of movie scores.
I listen to everything, I listen to all artists that come along.
Every day when I sit down to play, I learn something new.
You explore beautiful songs and create your own interpretation of them.
I’ll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I’d never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I’d never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn’t much like it at first.
An orchestra can become as familiar and reliable an instrument as a well-known, well-worn piano.
I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That’s when I was born.
I didn’t know the right names for anything at first, but I knew what knocked me out. Changes… man I dug.
I kinda went back to that period between ’88 and ’94 where I felt like I was the most creative, without being hindered by powers that be. I was no longer going to try to hinder myself to what I thought was going to be on the radio.
When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles and Dizzy it was very difficult.
Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.
