Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

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.

Fact is that I played piano and performed, as a young kid, a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . Don't forget I was only eleven-years-old and to be on the stage at that age had tremendous impact on me. Basically love for classical music and performing as a kid on the big stage probably led toward this decision, which meant that music is going to be my big love but also my profession.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

I have to care and I have to be honest and have the courage to be vulnerable. If that happens, then that's the best I can do. To just be a puppet for the audience is not very courageous. Just to do whatever they say they want - because a lot of times people will hear something new that they hadn't heard before and get turned on by a new experience and will want to hear more of that.

People always want to protect what's really going on inside. They want to kind of make visible something that looks more pleasant than what may be happening inside of themselves.

I hope to use dialogue and culture as a means of bringing people of various cultures together, and using that as a way to resolve conflict.