When a human being is oppressed, the natural tendency is to feel anger. Jazz is a response to oppression that is not bullets and blood. Jazz is the expression of harmony ... and at the same time of hope and freedom.

I like to be on the edge, on the cutting edge, or be into the unknown, into the territory where I have to depend on being in the moment and depending on my instincts.

My first Grammy wasn't even in a jazz category, but of course I was really excited. 'Rockit' was the beginning of kind of a new era for the whole hip-hop movement.

A great teacher is one who realizes that he himself is also a student and whose goal is not dictate the answers, but to stimulate his students' creativity enough so that they go out and find the answers themselves.

My father was really good with math. It's a funny thing, I don't remember my father or my mother being so mechanical-minded. My father always wanted to be a doctor, but he came from a really poor family in Georgia, and there was no way he was going to be a doctor.

Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept. He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that's where it really came from. Almost all of the harmony that I play can be traced to one of those four people and whoever their influences were.

You would not exist if you did not have something to bring to the table of life.