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" 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. "

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" I couldn't do what I do without the encouragement and influence of the musicians I played with in Chicago. "

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

" I didn't arrive on the scene until after Jaco Pastorius had passed, but 'Three Views of a Secret' is a long-time favourite of mine. "

" I hope to be at the top of my game when I'm 65 or 70. I don't want to reach my peak at 29. Not that I'm holding back anything, but there's a bunch of junk I don't know. "

" As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people. "

" If you start to dwell on your pain, the amount of pain will increase. "

" I listened to a lot of King Crimson back in the day. "

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

Graduate School

" I'm lucky that I enjoy touring as much as I do. I'm not going to make a living just making records. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I haven't been afraid of John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock. Why would I be afraid of the Beatles? "

" I hope that I'm also maturing emotionally as a human being as things go on. "

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

" You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies. "

" One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There's a spiritual complement to any attempt at transposing a commitment to humanity through music or art. "

" With a smaller setting, you have a lot more freedom and flexibility within a given moment, but not necessarily the velocity you have with a big band. "

" The idea is to be unrestrained by categories. "

" I've got more low notes than I had when I started. "

" 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. "

" Man, I just feel so fortunate to be a jazz musician at all. I have a hard time thinking of it any other way. It's such a fulfilling vocation. I love it. "

" Sometimes, with vocalese, I'm dealing with something, a great solo from the past, which is so iconic I can't presume to change it or mess with it. "

" There is an actor's responsibility in presenting the emotional content of the lyrics to an audience. But whether you do that in a straightforward fashion or an ironic fashion or a blase fashion is all about opportunities, and singers are missing opportunities as artists if they don't pay attention to the lyric. "

" You don't want to make records so you can win a Grammy. You make records because you want to be a musician. "

" I've tried to learn as much as I can about the great jazz singers to understand what makes them important, vital artists, but there is always something more to learn. "

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