Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.

When you have an acoustic bass in the ensemble it really changes the dynamic of the record because it kind of forces everybody to play with a greater degree of sensitivity and nuance because it just has a different kind of tone and spectrum than the electric bass.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized and there's just no outlet, there's no venue for it, in terms of media.

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave well enough alone. And that's a lifelong quest.

Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.

Music is just kind of an expression of who I am. It's what I do.

Ninety-nine percent of the music that was of any interest to me when I was growing up came out of the black community.

To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.

Well, I guess my unease with that is... I'm always a little uneasy with that phrase - smooth jazz, as opposed to what?

When I make records, I never listen to stuff after it's done. Ever.

You're only as good as your last record.

I have pretty ecumenical tastes. I'm interested in a lot of different kinds of music, so I don't listen with a jaundiced ear to music because it's in a certain category, whether it's country or opera or hip-hop or bebop or whatever it is.

I look at the artistic process as like experiencing the world, channeling it through your personality and sending it back out there. That's the process.

I tend to play in a way that feels natural to me. To me that's authentic for myself. I play by where I'm led by some sense of where I feel I'm supposed to be.

I think 'Horace Silver' was actually the first live jazz group I ever heard back when I was a kid in St. Louis. So along with most players of my generation, I have a real affection for the music of 'Horace Silver.'

In most of the stuff that I've done over the years as a sideman, I wasn't really a session musician, because to me, a session musician is a guy who makes his living in the studio, and I never really did that.

In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn.

Deception is everywhere.

All my high school papers were written in the rare book room.

Going from the written, flat word to the three-dimensional object, that was one of the more enriching things that I've done.