I use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.

I try not to "perform." I try to come on stage and be myself, to sing the way I would in a room by myself, to interact with the audience the way I would relate to them if we were in my kitchen drinking tea and making up silly songs. Maybe the way to get past the fear of being ourselves is simply to try it more often.

I bury my mind in my book, the Bible. Every morning it's the first thing that I do. I've been doing it for years and years. So I want to come back here [to Israel] to see the places that I read about every day. It's very important to my faith to feed [my] spirit in Israel.

I don't want anything to get in the way of me and my singing. I want my mind as clear as possible.

I'd actually been making my living as an organist with bands since I was probably 15 or 16 years old, and then as a senior in high school I put together a jazz quintet called The Bobby Mack Jazz Quintet.

It's not that I don't love the song. My songs are like my children: some you want around and some you want to send off to college as soon as possible.

Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.