You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.
Romance is one of the things that most countries share, and I've noticed how different communities have their own ways of singing about love and heartbreak.
Chicago has a burly, action-oriented but still self-assured and relaxed confidence to its stride. The city has a lot of wide-open space and all the possibilities that suggests. There's a lot of horizontal grandeur here.
Part of my joy as a singer is to give gifts to people, and one way I try to connect to them is to add something in French or German or whatever.
I'd been studying philosophy at the University of Chicago. I hadn't been doing well, because I was sitting in with jazz musicians at night - it's hard to read Heidegger, but it's especially hard if you're half asleep.
It's a lovely thing to have people in any circumstance appreciate your work.
It must be a hellish thing to know what's possible in music, to be hearing things all the time and not have an appropriate outlet for them.
You don't show respect to Frank Sinatra and his great example by trying to sound exactly like him. You show it by sounding exactly like you, and that's the way jazz has always progressed as an art form.
That's the thing: There are so many art songs in jazz. It's a much more rich experience for the singer than people think.
I've got more low notes than I had when I started.
I hope that I'm also maturing emotionally as a human being as things go on.
I listened to a lot of King Crimson back in the day.
I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.
The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle.
As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people.
Man, I just feel so fortunate to be a jazz musician at all. I have a hard time thinking of it any other way. It's such a fulfilling vocation. I love it.
I really thought I was gonna have a straight gig. But these jazz musicians put their arms around me time and again and said, 'Hey, young fella, you're one of us. Come with us.' That's a big deal when you're young and looking for your way in the world.
Out in L.A., things relax even further than they do in Chicago. There's such a looseness to it, and there's a potentially refreshing advantage to that.
Of course we all know when music's too much in the head, and we define our greatest players by the way they are able to communicate directly from their emotional selves.
I've tried to learn as much as I can about the great jazz singers to understand what makes them important, vital artists, but there is always something more to learn.
