Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

If you play the very subtle jazz tunes with acoustic pianos, acoustic bass and it's a dead standard, you are going to play very differently. It depends on the music.

As a matter of fact, we put it down because we wanted to be jazz pickers.

If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.

I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.

I've gone the full spectrum - from gospel to blues to jazz to soul to pop - and the public has accepted what I've done through it all. I think it means I've been doing something right at the right time.

I think jazz is good, but I don't enjoy it. It's not for me.

After I exhausted the blues thing, I got into jazz.

Rock and roll mainly but I can play passable jazz also.

My brother Leon started it all. He played the piano. In school they made me leader of the orchestra because I played the violin, but I followed Leon and the boys in his jazz band around.

You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That's jazz.

Too many jazz pianists limit themselves to a personal style, a trademark, so to speak. They confine themselves to one type of playing.

Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they're trying to say with jazz. You don't need any prologues, you just play.