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

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" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. Don't dismiss something out of hand because you think it's either beneath you or outside of the realm of where your interests lie. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Music is an expression of individuality; it's how you see the world. All art is, for that matter. You take how you experience the world, interpret it, and send it out there - express it - whether it's sculpture, dance or singing. "

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

" I didn't try to think what my audience wanted and then make the music accordingly. I made the music and hoped that as many people liked it as possible. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" It's always difficult to define what jazz is or what jazz isn't. To me, the only definition that I can think of is it's music where a lot of different elements are played at the same time. The harmonic, the melodic... You're pushing the boundaries on every level. That could be true of rhythm and blues as well. I'm a musician. "

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

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "