My dad would play me all of these records: Miles Davis records, John Coltrane records, Bill Evans records, a lot of jazz records. My first exposure to music was listening to jazz records.

When I was four, I started taking lessons from my mom. That's pretty much how I started.

Hearing Oscar Peterson was something that resonated within me. There are so many musicians I've been fortunate to play with. The people that inspire me are the people I play with.

Basically, my mother is a piano teacher, and she actually teaches piano at Yamaha School of Music today. She's a really, really amazing human being and is very patient. She had enough patience for me, as a kid, which I'm very thankful for. She made sure that music was a part of my general education as well.

Music is a thing where, the more vocabulary you gather, the more you can express yourself.

"Jazz" to begin with, is a really bad word... all the true musicians that really play jazz, jazz is the worst word for it. Jazz is a process. Jazz is a creative process. It's not so much a genre, but a way of expression.

I'd rather call it "instrumental creative music," especially the music that I've been doing. If a person would hear that music, they would undoubtedly call it "jazz." There is this whole generation of musicians that are playing and thinking critically for themselves and making music that's relevant to today. I hope that's the objective of a lot of musicians.