Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

One very fundamental thing has not changed and I realized that it will never change... is that I really need to go home and practice.

I don't know if I would qualify as mainstream. I think I have managed to function pretty successfully on the fringes of the music world and have been able to play exactly what I have wanted the way I have wanted

The main thing in my life...is that I really need to go home and practice.

I was deep in the zone of practicing almost constantly

It's a shame that jazz is now being turned into dried fruit. It's becoming quantized, diced and defined. It's becoming an idiom. To me if it's anything, jazz is a verb ? it's more like a process than it is a thing.

It is Jazz's very nature to change, to develop & adapt to the circumstances of its environment.