I had an opportunity to start going around the world when I was about 18 years old. So, I did. That's one of the things that I was doing.

I started playing classical music, and I still do. I think music ultimately is kind of on a theoretical level, is about collecting and learning as much vocabulary as possible. It's kind of like writing. It's kind of like writing because the more you read, the more you hear people describe things. The more you soak in, as far as vocabulary, the more access you have in order to express yourself accurately and vividly.

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.

The main thing about the word jazz, is that it's very limiting to what people are doing.

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

I had an opportunity to start going around the world when I was about 18 years old. So, I did. That's one of the things that I was doing.

I grew up in Kansas City from when I was about two years old to my mid-teens. Kansas City at the time was an amazing place, because there was so much music going on there. As a kid, I was playing there all the time and learning a lot about music.