Improvisation means coming to the situation without rigid expectations or preconceptions. The key to improvisation is motion — you keep going forward, fearful or not, living from moment to moment. That’s how life is.

Music is so powerful, it needs to be used for some kind of redeeming work. To lift peoples spirits, to lift their souls.

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.

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

Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.

I have a lot of albums yet to do.