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" In New York, the drummers rush for a reason - because there's so much energy crackling through everything in that city and so many collisions at a highly accelerated rate. "

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" I spend upwards of 200 nights a year on the road. "

" I consider myself very fortunate. I have a beautiful wife who supports my work and is raising our daughter when I'm out on the road. "

" Audiences have taught me how to sing better and entertain better. "

" It's a beautiful thing to have time in the world, as a singer and as a musician, to make friends with people of the musical caliber of a Tommy Smith, an Arturo Sandoval, a Richard Galliano, a Till Broenner. "

" I remember seeing Tony Bennett on television. He was the only guy in the orchestra who was wearing a white tux, and I thought, 'That would be good. To be the only man on stage in a white jacket.' "

" Out in L.A., things relax even further than they do in Chicago. There's such a looseness to it, and there's a potentially refreshing advantage to that. "

" Of course we all know when music's too much in the head, and we define our greatest players by the way they are able to communicate directly from their emotional selves. "

" I think my intention was there, and my love for the music was apparent. And there are very few singers who get up and desire to take the kinds of risks that jazz musicians routinely need to be taking. "

" I've tried to educate myself in the world and what's beautiful and what has meaning and is lasting. Then I just follow my intuition and see how it fits. "

" My strength is to communicate with an audience and to know what jazz singing is capable of. "

" We live in a society where it's cool to be criminal. "

" At a certain point, the graduate school thing didn't work out, and that meant I was liberated. "

Graduate School

" I try to sleep as much as I can. I drink a lot of water. I practice consistently and just try to be ready for the gig. "

" The idea is to be unrestrained by categories. "

" Why limit yourself to one discipline or field of study? "

" It's easy to get tired of religious fundamentalists. They're such a bore. They have no sense of mystery. It's a drag, man. "

" You don't just let a guy drop off the earth and not come together with everybody who knew him and loved him and respected him. You try to do it the right way. "

" I know how hard it's been for me to get my thing out there. "

" It's pretty rare in jazz to have a full-on steady band. "

" It's a lovely thing to have people in any circumstance appreciate your work. "

" I'd been studying philosophy at the University of Chicago. I hadn't been doing well, because I was sitting in with jazz musicians at night - it's hard to read Heidegger, but it's especially hard if you're half asleep. "

" A lot of people are put off by the idea of scat singing. Either that or it's something to be made fun of. "

" When improvisation is properly applied, it is compositional thinking, sped way up. "

" Every record is a gate of a certain kind for me. "

" Chicago has a burly, action-oriented but still self-assured and relaxed confidence to its stride. The city has a lot of wide-open space and all the possibilities that suggests. There's a lot of horizontal grandeur here. "

" Listening to something without being present is different from being there in the flesh. "

" You don't know what bravery is until you overcome fear. "

" Part of my joy as a singer is to give gifts to people, and one way I try to connect to them is to add something in French or German or whatever. "

" My goal is to be really incredible by the time I'm 70. "

" I think of jazz as being homage through innovation. Don't quote that as a definition, but it comes pretty close. "