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

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized and there's just no outlet, there's no venue for it, in terms of media.

I have pretty ecumenical tastes. I'm interested in a lot of different kinds of music, so I don't listen with a jaundiced ear to music because it's in a certain category, whether it's country or opera or hip-hop or bebop or whatever it is.

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.

Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.

Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.

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.