I've never heard anything Wynton [Marsalis] played sound like it meant anything at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a talented high-school trumpet player to me... he's jazzy the same way someone who drives a BMW is sporty.

One thing you learn: if you want to reveal yourself, you also have to know where to stop.

If I'm not a jazz player all the time, I've at least been cued in to what I do by jazz.

You know, when people look at a tree, they look at the leaves; they don't look at the spaces between the leaves. They're focused on the tree. I think there's an awareness of spaces or it wouldn't look like a tree to them.

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

Silence is the potential from which music can arise.

I can't even tolerate my own playing on electric keyboards. It's not about the musical ideas - the sound itself is toxic. It's like eating plastic broccoli.