I’m not a scholar or a psychologist, so I don’t really think about why. But I do think about what it means to sing to and with people, to offer music to them, and to ask them to spend time with me.

Music is still part of my spiritual life. Sometimes I sing my prayers. When I get audiences singing, I hope I'm helping them feel connected to something beyond themselves.

The true musician is to bring light into people's hearts.

When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they’re talking to us. When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of — or alongside — the words of a song. I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.

When we're doing our lessons, the teacher doesn't say, 'Ready, set, work,' They say, 'Ready, set, play,' and I always took that word seriously.

Musicians are the architects of heaven.

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.