Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is ’cause I’m changing all the time.
I play as I feel.
Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential.
You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads.
Surrender your whole being to a note and gravity disappears.
Stevie didn’t use the technology to drive the song. He used it to enhance. I use the tools to further my work, I don’t use my work to further the tools.
When we were at the Apollo, Holiday was a block away. I asked her for her autograph.
Start well and end well. The middle will look after itself.
Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy’s playing blues like we play, he’s in high school. When he starts playing jazz it’s like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.
Your horn is your passport to the world.
It’s Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, you know. They got a musical mind together and uh, you can’t explain it.
Music gives us a lot of things and it only wants one thing back… your attention.
After the music is over it’s gone in the air. You can never capture it again.
I love songs that are very autobiographical.
I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.
You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.
Look at the tune and not make the same statement that has been made a million times.
It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.
I went through a struggle, and I really needed to get myself together and connect with my purpose, which is music.
The true value of this music lies in an artist’s individual creativity and that unique process of expression which is Jazz.
