I was totally into jazz in my teens.

I'm just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music - I don't want to do generic jazz or fusion.

It was the early days of Rock 'n' Roll in this country. We were all struggling to learn music, it might be Country, Jazz, Classical, Blues or even Rock 'n' Roll.

Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school.

We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians.

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.

Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.

We went to see all the shows. American musical theater and jazz were very big.

I'm not really a country singer, although I did make a couple albums and love its simple, straight-from-the-heart approach, but I have always sung a lot of jazz, show tunes, pop tunes, gospel and blues.

I can imagine an utter hatred for the jazz avant-garde.

The iconoclastic mode, that specific mode of language, there is an element of it that it is punk - that is confrontational. That's just a part of the language of jazz - at a certain point.

It was a particularly interesting and exciting time, and the European political and artistic establishment was turned on by the Civil Rights Movement and the artistic revolution that was becoming a part of jazz.

I don't like freedom jazz - I think it's void of roots and void of foundation.

Personally, I think young musicians need to learn to play more than one style. Jazz can only enhance the classical side, and classical can only enhance the jazz. I started out playing classical, because you have to have that as a foundation.