The first jazz pianist I heard was Thelonious Monk. My father was listening to an album of his called 'Monk's Dream' almost every day from the time I was born.
As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.
I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.
Orchestras are not used to playing the kind of stuff jazz musicians like to play. It requires a lot of rehearsal and recording time, so it's much easier to do on a synth or sampler. So, we came up with that idea.
When I'd hear something that sounded like I could follow it - most of those big band jazz tunes are blues anyway - I would hum it and play with the fiddle while I was humming.
The people in Japan know more about the history of jazz and the musicians than the people in the United States do.
I think the Flecktones are a mixture of acoustic and electronic music with a lot of roots in folk and bluegrass as well as funk and jazz.
Jazz is about freedom within discipline. Usually a dictatorship like in Russia and Germany will prevent jazz from being played because it just seemed to represent freedom, democracy and the United States.
In fact, jazz has such a great feeling and great emotional content that it really doesn't require you to have technical understanding of it. I think you just have to allow your feelings to go with the music and you will find yourself carried along by it fairly quickly.
It is rare that even a jazz musician finds an individual voice.
I'm just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music - I don't want to do generic jazz or fusion.
Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion.
I'm primarily thought of as a rocker, and certainly 'Frankenstein' had a very dramatic power rock image. It was almost a precursor of heavy metal and fusion. But I also love jazz and classical and if there's one common thread that runs through all my music, it is blues.
I have a bachelor's and a master's in jazz.
If there was no black man there would be no Rock'n'Roll. The beat, the rhythms of Africa are what created Rock'n'Roll and Jazz.
Jazz was uplifted by what I did.
One of the things I love about jazz music is that intent is first and execution is second. In classical music, execution is first and intent is second, meaning that you must first learn a piece before you can truly add your interpretation to it.
I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.
Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.
Jazz is about being in the moment.
My brother had a big band in high school; after that we continued to play together, eventually forming a group called the Jazz Brothers, that recorded for Riverside Records.
Growing up, I listened to a lot of jazz and blues records - John Coltrane and Etta James. I was also really into Radiohead and the BeeGees.
There's a certain phraseology involved in jazz, and I've moved away from that.
There is a modern take on certain things you can do that, to me, is still jazz.
The reason New Orleans is still around is because of the celebrations it has inspired since its inception as a city. I'm always excited about the possibility of what might happen. That's what drives us, and I think that's the spirit of New Orleans and the spirit of jazz.
I still play jazz, and I've always got that trumpet very handy, but I'm coming to feel the classical venues are where my main focus is, in the realm of symphonic pops.
Jazz of the sort we play is a happy, extroverted music. You don't have to think about it too much.
Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.
To me, Bill's musical heart is in Earthworks, in the jazz they are playing, in the acoustic kit.
It's something that - jazz is one of the few things that you can go and listen to, I don't care where you're from, what you are, what background you come from - there's something there for you.
The beauty of jazz is that it can accommodate all styles. You can take jazz and put rock in it, and it's still jazz.
I listened to a lot of Amy Winehouse: her albums 'Frank' and 'Back to Black'. She was such an incredible artist. She was just so raw and had her unique sound; she paired jazz with pop and was so soulful at the same time. So I pulled from her a lot in the beginning.
Bach was a top harmonist geezer, which is why the jazz cats love him.
My music isn't anything but me. It has jazz in it, and rock'n'roll, and it has an urgency to it.
I stayed with them for about a year up there and, at night, worked over in Long Island at a club called The High Hat Club which was like a pseudo jazz / blues place.
Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.