It's not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project.

I don't look at music from the standpoint of being a musician; I look at it from the standpoint of being a human being.

All you have to do is play one note. But it needs to be the right note.

The arts have always served relationships between people of different cultures so well. In a way, the arts function as a very serious kind of ambassador.

So much of what I create has been due to the influence of Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, and so many of those that have passed on. Their music, their legacy lives on with the rest of us because we are so highly influenced by their experience and what they have given us.

It is people's hearts that move the age.

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.