When I make records, I never listen to stuff after it's done. Ever.

I tend to play in a way that feels natural to me. To me that's authentic for myself. I play by where I'm led by some sense of where I feel I'm supposed to be.

To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.

I think 'Horace Silver' was actually the first live jazz group I ever heard back when I was a kid in St. Louis. So along with most players of my generation, I have a real affection for the music of 'Horace Silver.

In most of the stuff that I've done over the years as a sideman, I wasn't really a session musician, because to me, a session musician is a guy who makes his living in the studio, and I never really did that.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized.

Ninety-nine percent of the music that was of any interest to me when I was growing up came out of the black community.