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" All the music that I've made in the past I've believed in. I think some of it has been more commercially successful than others, but it wasn't premeditated. "

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

" 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. "

" I have a certain temperament, a disposition that I think lends itself to not playing outside the lines that much. But I do test the boundaries, certainly, and break one or two of my own. Some people are mystified by it, but not me. "

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

" 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. "

" I think a valid approach to being a musician is to take all of the experience of your life and filter it through your personality and send it back out there, and that's what art is. "

" My drummer, Gene Lake, is Oliver Lake's son. So I certainly have wide tastes, in not only what I listen to, but what I play as well. "

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

" I try to do things that keep me interested. And play music that moves me. I like to move around and play in a lot of different ways. "

" When you see the same familiar faces, it's nice when you get a chance to play with the same musicians. You start to develop this shorthand so everybody knows where you're at and where you're going, but then again, there are always surprises. But the more people are comfortable with the material, the more free you can be with the music. "

" Everyone goes through the ups and downs of living - fretting about the future, worrying about what happened. Music teaches us how to be in the moment. "

" You're only as good as your last record. "

" While St. Louis is technically regarded as part of the Mid-West, it's actually - geographically and emotionally - more part of the South. I mean, the sensibility of St. Louis is really very much that of a Southern Mississippi river-town. "

" If you're playing with somebody from another idiom, you can't react to them in the same way that you react to somebody that is closer to your idiom. You don't fall into the same habits. You find a new way of communicating. "

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

" I was actually in an iron lung for about a year, and then I was paralysed from the neck down for another year after that. So I spent a lotta time just lying down as a kid. And some of my earliest memories from then are of listening to the radio. "

" When I was 17 or 18 and it was time to figure out what to do with my life, I realized that I didn't enjoy anything as much as I enjoyed playing music. I felt that I had no choice: that I had to become a musician. "

" It's tough to be in a relationship with a musician, because it reads sometimes as this ego and self-involvement when it's really just concentration and focus. "

" When you're on stage, unless you surrender to the moment, you're not telling the truth. I look for people that tell me the truth. "

" 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'm moved by a lot of different kinds of music, whether it's pop music or R&B or straight-ahead jazz or free or opera or music from all parts of the world. "

" I became a musician because I love music, and that is what has sustained me; it's not because I thought it was a great way to make a living. Music saved my life. "

" As a melody instrument player, it's all about getting from one note to the next, and those intervals and how you navigate your way through these vertical structures of chords. You realize that everything's moving forward, and it's all linear. "

" 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 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.' "

" I always wanna be in the process of evolving and growing. "

" 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 think, in a lot of ways, it's easier to play a smaller room. You can exploit the quieter dynamics you would shy away from in larger venues. "

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

" Music is like an open sky. You know it's out there... and there you are. "