I go by the "Miles Davis school of production and band-leading", where you pick the best musicians you can, you provide them with a minimum of direction, and you just let the music happen. I've seen it work time and time again.

Once I had the band, Jason [Moran] and John [Patitucci] and Eric [Harland] - it's very exciting to have that trio of just world-class guys - I already knew it was going to be fantastic. I didn't really tell them anything about it. They didn't know what they were going to play beforehand.

The level of musicianship in New York is the highest in the world. It's tough to get into. You start gigging making 50 dollars a night, or playing for nothing to get to something. It's insane. It's like being a modern dancer, or something - the hardest thing to make money from.

If you look at the other singers of Billie Holiday's time, they were really trying to entertain. They were trying to make people feel good. They were singing fast - and she was singing the blues.

All my stuff is pretty seamless - like now, while I'm touring [Yesterday I Sang The Blues], today I'm going to go in the studio, I'm writing my next one. For me it's continual.

[Billie Holiday] was keeping it super real, and you can feel that to this day. Everything that she sang, she believed in. So I had to pick songs that I felt the same about.

I really like the complexity of jazz, the emotional depth; I feel like there's no other music that's really as satisfying as jazz.