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.

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

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.

As far as the people that have inspired me, they're the people that I have played with the most. For example, the record that I made called Virtue, there was a wonderful band and a wonderful drummer by the name of Ludwig Afonso and a wonderful bass player by the name of Armando Gola.

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.

My dad, was, by trade, he had a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. He's a huge, huge jazz fan. He used to travel all the time for projects, and he used to collect jazz records. He used to collect hundreds and hundreds of jazz records because he had this passion for it. That's kind of how they had certain hobbies together with my mom.