You don't know what bravery is until you overcome fear.
We all know that jazz demands a cultivation of the mind.
You learn as much as you can from the people that you work with. That's why you want to surround yourself with the heaviest people that you can possibly get to.
People just want to dig; they want to dance. They don't want to work all through the night, and neither do I. I like getting 'out there,' but communication should be occurring on more levels than heavy-laden philosophical.
When improvisation is properly applied, it is compositional thinking, sped way up.
I can't say New York's home, but I've made a lot of friends, and I'm developing a map of what cats are here and where they play, and as a singer, you're always looking for projects that tie things in emotionally and intuitively with your life.
Every record is a gate of a certain kind for me.
There is an actor's responsibility in presenting the emotional content of the lyrics to an audience. But whether you do that in a straightforward fashion or an ironic fashion or a blase fashion is all about opportunities, and singers are missing opportunities as artists if they don't pay attention to the lyric.
Karl Johnson, my first piano player at Milt Trenier's, he just swung really hard and gave me a sense of really belonging to the jazz scene.
The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence.
You don't want to make records so you can win a Grammy. You make records because you want to be a musician.
I consider myself very fortunate. I have a beautiful wife who supports my work and is raising our daughter when I'm out on the road.
There's a spiritual complement to any attempt at transposing a commitment to humanity through music or art.
I remember seeing Tony Bennett on television. He was the only guy in the orchestra who was wearing a white tux, and I thought, 'That would be good. To be the only man on stage in a white jacket.'
I've got enough miles under my belt to know that whatever you envision in your mind, even if it comes true, will only keep a shape in the most general way.
While I revel in the memories of my own Grammy moment, I also know how it feels to walk away empty-handed.
A lot of the commercial world wants to bank in on the cachet that jazz brings.
There are incredible musicians around the world.
My intellect was quickened at divinity school, and my abilities to discern were strengthened, and that's always valuable.
It's easy to get tired of religious fundamentalists. They're such a bore. They have no sense of mystery. It's a drag, man.
