I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I've dreamed.

You can't be different if you look at it. Being gifted is different. I had that in my piano playing. I'm very thankful for that. I'm very aware of that. The style and what I fed is just me. I never worked at it. It just happened.

Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow.

As far as piano players are concerned, Oscar Peterson is my very favorite. I also like McCoy Tyner. I think that the big jazz stars, both now and in the past...how shall I say it? These guys are as great as Bach, Beethoven; all of them. People don't know it yet. If jazz survives and is put on a pedestal as an art form, the same as classical music has been through the years, a hundred years from now the kids will know who they were, with that kind of respect.

How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?

I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.

I'm a real rebel with a cause.