When you're on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn't exactly a sound - it's a hum, like the streets.

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

We accept so many things that come through the media; we get used to them, however vigilant we are. But for any creative art, you have to remain 110% conscious, and in a world that's losing consciousness, that's getting harder.

Music always turns into music. As soon as I play a key, push a key down, there's no theory any more. When I go and I hear a sound on the keyboard, all theories go out the window.

Once we're inside a tune, we can do anything with it.

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.

I believe that a truly valuable artist must be an artist who realizes the impossibility of his task -and then continues to do it.