I want to be the jazz singer.
I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends.
My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.
I love jazz and pop rock and country. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Anne Murray - if I hear something really great... I want to be a part of it.
My CD collection has a lot of world music - lots of Indian, African, Portuguese, Greek, Italian music. Because of my husband, a lot of jazz, too.
I recorded my first jazz record in the '70s.
I used to be a jazz snob, believe it or not. I sort of turned my nose up at anything more commercial.
I like a lot of electronica. I like older jazz rather than newer.
My prayer is improvised - though like some standard jazz performance, the improv happens within pretty strict parameters - and asks for nothing.
Music is a huge part of my life, I enjoy every genre of music from jazz to country, and I even get down with a bit of hip hop.
I've got a lot of friends with whom I discuss jazz.
Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones.
The jazz I love is sweet and pure with raw elements, which is exactly what the good hip-hop is doing now.
I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.
That's the exact concept behind the music: to take that kind of, I guess whatever you want to call it, jazz sensibility - but not have it be about solos.
It's easy to mock a man who has founded a religion based on John Coltrane, who considers 'A Love Supreme,' whatever its merits as a jazz album, to be holy scripture.
Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something. And I think it's a way of - for me, it's a way of trying to understand the city, and what might happen in the city.
Dialogue is like jazz. Dialogue is creative.
Whether I do jazz or R&B, there are always complaints. I would just listen to the complaints about what I do instead of celebrating what I do, and that I'm different and in my own lane. It took a while for me to just ignore the doubts.
In Montreal, there is a friend of mine at school who is a jazz pianist with an amazing voice, and we sort of have this fusion/soul/R&B/folk music kind of thing. We've been keeping it low-key and opening for some friends.
Miles Davis was doing something inherently African, something that has to do with all forms of American music, not just jazz.
Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.
I think the singer/songwriter genre is going to be like bluegrass and jazz. You can make a living at it, but it's not part of the musical mainstream anymore.
If it comes out sounding like Dixieland jazz or classical or punk or rock or even slightly metal, that's because that's where I'm going to find inspiration.
I think the challenges for me was to go into the studio with these incredible jazz players and come up to their level of excellence. That's always a challenge.
I played in school jazz bands and tried to start rock bands, but nobody was interested.
From blood banking to the modern subway, from jazz to social justice, the contributions of African Americans have shaped and molded and influenced our national culture and our national character.
If I wasn't in the entertainment industry at all, I would be a miserable human being serving pancakes at Denny's. I'm also a singer, so maybe I'd be singing at dark jazz clubs in Brooklyn.
I don't worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about jazz.
My favorite type of music to sing to would be rock and roll, Tenacious D, Led Zeppelin, some Queen - I love all of them. I love singing to them because they're all just great voices. I love listening to very obscure jazz.
I liked the more sophisticated urban style of blues like Ray Charles and B. B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Lou Rawls; people like that with more of a tendency toward jazz.
Rock music was the death of jazz in a way. I know there's a bunch of people who say jazz isn't dead, but I mean, rock 'n roll, you play three chords to 20,000 people; jazz, you play 20,000 chords to three people.
I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.
Y'know, I don't like jazz much. I'll put it on once in a while and listen, and I'll appreciate it.
Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.
Not with the Rochester Philharmonic, but I formed my own orchestra, made up of musicians from the Eastman School, where I'm on the faculty now, direct the Jazz Ensemble and teach improvisation classes.