I like to say, jazz music is kind of like my musical equivalent of comfort food. You know, it's always where I go back to when I just want to feel sort of grounded.
A way to make new music is to imagine looking back at the past from a future and imagine music that could have existed but didn't. Like East African free jazz, which as far as I know does not exist.
I could hear music playing in the background of works by certain authors, like Poe and Shakespeare. And I discovered Nikki Giovanni when I was in eighth grade. Her writing has a musical energy with pulse and rhythm, almost like jazz or hip-hop.
As a New Yorker you can't help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted 'Rhapsody in Blue' here; the Velvet Underground are from New York.
I have truly eclectic taste in music, and I seem to cycle through phases in terms of to what's inspiring me. I'll go from Beethoven to Sigur Ros; world music, Brit-pop, classic rock, blues/jazz, even the odd bit of heavy metal.
To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.
I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz.
As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.
Jazz vision is a wordless conversation between musical notes and visual expressions.
Jazz was more of a tool for me to use to enhance my musicality.
I'm just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music - I don't want to do generic jazz or fusion.
Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom!
I believe that blues and jazz are the two uniquely American contributions into music.
So the whole basis for jazz music is based on the fact that the bass player could not play his instrument.
Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.
Jazz has been such a force in music, that any musician, including classical composers, have been influenced, and obviously performers, also.
My work has been marginalized as far as the jazz-business complex is concerned, or the contemporary-music complex.
Jazz told people about the special music that came out of America and about America in general and this kind of liberty and freedom that we have.
I'm done with industrial. Seriously, my iPod collection at home has no industrial music on it; it's strictly jazz, blues and country.
I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards - Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.
I've learnt new scales through playing different types of music, like Indian raga scales, gipsy scales and harmonically-based jazz scales.