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.

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

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

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 mom was a musician, and my dad had this passion for music. That's kind of how a lot of their relationship was built. When I came around, I was constantly exposed to music.

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.