With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.

You go through phases. You have to reinvent reasons for playing, and one year's answer might not do for another.

We may be coming to a new golden age of instrument making.

The thing that I've always been slightly frustrated with, was that the idea of a CD is kind of confined to a material possession that you can put on a shelf. And the idea of music, for me, is always about both the communication and the sharing of content. And so the interactive part is missing.

I learn something not because I have to, but because I really want to. That's the same view I have for performing. I'm performing because I really want to, not because I have to bring bread back home.

I play an instrument that has four strings, and I'm still trying to get it right. What I've tried to do in the process of playing these four strings is to try and understand the people I meet, the stories they have to tell. And then become an advocate for them and their stories through music.

People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'