It's the group sound that's important, even when you're playing a solo.

Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.

It's the group sound that's important, even when you're playing a solo.

Sweets [Edison] can say more with one note than any other Jazz player alive... an approach that stresses simplicity, glorious tone, natural potency and an unmatched affinity. He is a unique stylist in our music.

I despair about the lack of proper respect shown for the piano. If you want it to sound like a traffic jam, go out in the street and forget the piano. That's not a piano sound.

We're not like pop musicians who have to perform the same top ten tunes every night of a tour.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing. I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea. I have no one style. I play as I feel.