Oddly enough, my mother was born in Southampton. I have roots in Southampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor. My grandfather, her father, Stefano Rullo, when he came from Naples, he went to Pennsylvania and worked coal mines.

The [Frank] Sinatra interpretation of the music, as opposed to some other music that you were listening to - where you felt like they were singing at you - you felt Sinatra was singing to you. It's a very intimate art form, and that's what I responded to - the intimacy of his performance.

And just everyone in the 40s, you got to realize, for his time period, take Justin Bieber and put it on steroids - there was no one like Frank Sinatra before that. And you didn't have the amount of outlets that you have today and the variety that you have today. So, the Great American Songbook united the nation unlike any other music, because there weren't so many different kinds of communications.

The music and the message, to me, is something that is imperative and that's what drives me know.

I've been going around the world; I've been to China, I sang at the General Assembly, the Security Council.

I studied with Stella Adler and I didn't like the representational aspect of most opera singers. Most of the opera singers had not a false, but over theatrical way of presenting.

I would want to bring a certain kind of unity and awareness to different things. Even in the 80s, I wanted to do something with Unicef, and I wrote a song for Unicef, but I didn't have any means or the celebrity.