There are so few people who can really take hold of art and sort of eat and chew it up. Somehow it's got to be held special, sacred in a corner, and if you don't do the same thing with it, if you're not equally reverential, serious, and pompous about it, well, then you're not a great artist. Who needs that?

I don't think that scheduling is uncreative. I think that structure is required for creativity.

You double your intensity with skill.

Art is an investigation.

Nobody likes to see that which they've invested in disappear from the face of the earth before they've even died. This is not cool. We can now see what the landmarks, in fact are.

That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action.

I began ear training when I was about six months old. My mother was a concert pianist, and she started all of her children with music before they were a year old. Then she began to see that I had a musical gift...