You don't know what bravery is until you overcome fear.
Kurt Elling
You learn as much as you can from the people that you work with. That's why you want to surround yourself with the heaviest people that you can possibly get to.
I'm one of the culprits who keeps turning stuff around, shaking up original tunes and trying to stand the canon on its ear. But sometimes, you just need to sing the song.
There's a spiritual complement to any attempt at transposing a commitment to humanity through music or art.
One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.
'Man in the Air' was an experience in exercise.
I consider myself very fortunate. I have a beautiful wife who supports my work and is raising our daughter when I'm out on the road.
People just want to dig; they want to dance. They don't want to work all through the night, and neither do I. I like getting 'out there,' but communication should be occurring on more levels than heavy-laden philosophical.
I've got more low notes than I had when I started.
You can start from any source material, and you can approach it with a jazz ear, and then it will become a jazz moment.
I like the power and versatility of a big band and how an orchestra can vary the dynamics from very loud to very quiet, and SNJO covers those bases.
Karl Johnson, my first piano player at Milt Trenier's, he just swung really hard and gave me a sense of really belonging to the jazz scene.
Grammy nominations are certainly pleasant, but you can forget about them and lead a perfectly happy life - provided you have the approval of the musicians you work with.
In New York, the drummers rush for a reason - because there's so much energy crackling through everything in that city and so many collisions at a highly accelerated rate.
I try to stick with things that I can sing with honesty.
I hope that I'm also maturing emotionally as a human being as things go on.
I remember seeing Tony Bennett on television. He was the only guy in the orchestra who was wearing a white tux, and I thought, 'That would be good. To be the only man on stage in a white jacket.'
I listened to a lot of King Crimson back in the day.
I hope to be at the top of my game when I'm 65 or 70. I don't want to reach my peak at 29. Not that I'm holding back anything, but there's a bunch of junk I don't know.
I think of jazz as being homage through innovation. Don't quote that as a definition, but it comes pretty close.
We live in a society where it's cool to be criminal.
I really thought I was gonna have a straight gig. But these jazz musicians put their arms around me time and again and said, 'Hey, young fella, you're one of us. Come with us.' That's a big deal when you're young and looking for your way in the world.
The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle.
It's easy to get tired of religious fundamentalists. They're such a bore. They have no sense of mystery. It's a drag, man.
I can't say New York's home, but I've made a lot of friends, and I'm developing a map of what cats are here and where they play, and as a singer, you're always looking for projects that tie things in emotionally and intuitively with your life.
I've tried to educate myself in the world and what's beautiful and what has meaning and is lasting. Then I just follow my intuition and see how it fits.
A lot of the commercial world wants to bank in on the cachet that jazz brings.
You don't just let a guy drop off the earth and not come together with everybody who knew him and loved him and respected him. You try to do it the right way.
I don't really have a more intellectualized approach. After the fact, I can sure talk about stuff a lot - but when I make decisions, I really just follow what sounds good to me.
I haven't been afraid of John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock. Why would I be afraid of the Beatles?
There is an actor's responsibility in presenting the emotional content of the lyrics to an audience. But whether you do that in a straightforward fashion or an ironic fashion or a blase fashion is all about opportunities, and singers are missing opportunities as artists if they don't pay attention to the lyric.
We all know that jazz demands a cultivation of the mind.
Chicago has a burly, action-oriented but still self-assured and relaxed confidence to its stride. The city has a lot of wide-open space and all the possibilities that suggests. There's a lot of horizontal grandeur here.
Every record is a gate of a certain kind for me.
When improvisation is properly applied, it is compositional thinking, sped way up.
You can never predict what the specific shape of your life is going to be, and you won't really know its general shape until, God willing, you're advanced in years and you have the time and opportunity to look back in a coherent way and see what your life was about.
The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence.
Part of my joy as a singer is to give gifts to people, and one way I try to connect to them is to add something in French or German or whatever.
Audiences have taught me how to sing better and entertain better.
I'd been studying philosophy at the University of Chicago. I hadn't been doing well, because I was sitting in with jazz musicians at night - it's hard to read Heidegger, but it's especially hard if you're half asleep.
There are incredible musicians around the world.
While I revel in the memories of my own Grammy moment, I also know how it feels to walk away empty-handed.
My intellect was quickened at divinity school, and my abilities to discern were strengthened, and that's always valuable.
I've got enough miles under my belt to know that whatever you envision in your mind, even if it comes true, will only keep a shape in the most general way.
Salacious? I suppose every once in a while the salacious thing is not a bad thing. It's kind of monochromatic if that's all you do.
Sometimes people have this notion that improvisation is simply intuitive leaping into the unknown.
You don't want to make records so you can win a Grammy. You make records because you want to be a musician.
Listening to something without being present is different from being there in the flesh.
If you start to dwell on your pain, the amount of pain will increase.
It's a lovely thing to have people in any circumstance appreciate your work.
