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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.