So much of what I create has been due to the influence of Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, and so many of those that have passed on. Their music, their legacy lives on with the rest of us because we are so highly influenced by their experience and what they have given us.
My first Grammy wasn't even in a jazz category, but of course I was really excited. 'Rockit' was the beginning of kind of a new era for the whole hip-hop movement.
One thing that attracted me to Buddhism was the support for this larger vision of values.
I've had a life that has taken many interesting paths. I've learned a lot from mentors who were instrumental in shaping me, and I want to share what I've learned.
Wisdom is the key to understanding the age, creating the time.
Back in the day for me was a great time in my life - I was in my 20s. Most people refer to their experiences in their twenties as being a highlight in their life. It's a period of time where you often develop your own way, your own sound, your own identity, and that happened with me, when I was with a great teacher - Miles Davis.
But I have to be careful not to let the world dazzle me so much that I forget that I'm a husband and a father.
The thing that we possess, that machines don't, is the ability to exhibit wisdom.
You can expand, repeat, even change keys and do other things electronically to give certain elements and phrases more cohesiveness.
I've always been interested in science. I used to take watches apart and clocks apart, and there's little screws, and a little this and that, and I found out if I dropped one of them, that thing ain't gonna work.
As a human being, I'm concerned about the world that I live in.So, I'm concerned about peace.I'm concerned about man's inhumanity to man. I'm concerned about the environment.
In World War II, jazz absolutely was the music of freedom, and then in the Cold War, behind the Iron Curtain, same thing. It was all underground, but they needed the food of freedom that jazz offered.
I like the idea of an eclectic approach, incorporating jazz with other forms and other genres of music.
One of the greatest attributes of jazz, I think, is that it is that open.
I'm always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.
I've been curious ever since I was a little kid.
I spent five years, at least, working with Miles. Together, we recorded ESP, Nefertiti, Sorcerer -- and I can tell you; each of these albums instantly became jazz classics. Hey, we had Wayne Shorter playing tenor sax, Ron [Carter] on bass, Tony Williams played drums. That was great band we had.
I don't think there are any pure Africans of the African Americans, but the African part of our history was pretty much taken away from us during slavery, so the 60s gave us a chance, because of the civil rights movement, to kind of re-examine and make some sort of formal connection to our African-ness.
Oscar Peterson is the greatest living influence on jazz pianists today.
In the past, there's always been one leader that has led the pack to development of the music.
It is people's hearts that move the age.
The first thing I ever heard about synthesizers, they were being used in rock.
I don't look at music from the standpoint of being a musician; I look at it from the standpoint of being a human being.
I feel a lot more secure about the directions I take, than I might have, had I not practiced Buddhism.
Fact is that I played piano and performed, as a young kid, a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . Don't forget I was only eleven-years-old and to be on the stage at that age had tremendous impact on me. Basically love for classical music and performing as a kid on the big stage probably led toward this decision, which meant that music is going to be my big love but also my profession.
