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.

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.

You never get it figured out. You just keep playing.

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.

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave well enough alone. And that's a lifelong quest.

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

I think that that's the way the music grows and changes and becomes new and creative and vital. It's by synthesizing elements from all around it and not to maintain this kind of rigid myopic kind of tunnel vision, in a sense, trying to maintain a certain kind of purity, or whatever.