“A lot of people are put off by the idea of scat singing. Either that or it's something to be made fun of.”

“A lot of the commercial world wants to bank in on the cachet that jazz brings.”

“As improvisers, we're acting as composers in front of people.”

“At a certain point, the graduate school thing didn't work out, and that meant I was liberated.”

“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.”

“Each of the CDs prior to 'Flirting With Twilight' were more like roller-coaster rides.”

“I didn't arrive on the scene until after Jaco Pastorius had passed, but 'Three Views of a Secret' is a long-time favourite of mine.”

“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 don't want to take it easy.”

“I had everything to gain by giving it everything I could.”

“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?”

“I hope that I'm also maturing emotionally as a human being as things go on.”

“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 know how hard it's been for me to get my thing out there.”

“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.”

“I listened to a lot of King Crimson back in the day.”

“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.”

“I think I make most of my decisions pretty organically.”

“I think my intention was there, and my love for the music was apparent. And there are very few singers who get up and desire to take the kinds of risks that jazz musicians routinely need to be taking.”

“I travel all the time. And as I go around the world, I try to learn a little something and not just take up all the available air.”

“I try to sleep as much as I can. I drink a lot of water. I practice consistently and just try to be ready for the gig.”

“I try to stick with things that I can sing with honesty.”

“I want to be the jazz singer.”

“I was very lucky that more experienced musicians allowed me to caterwaul until I figured out what it was really about.”

“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.”

“If I was going to sell out, I would do it for more than 10,000 records.”

“If you're going to be transparent, you're going to have to let the music come that wants to come.”

“I'm a goof, man.”

“I'm a guy who has more slapstick than Joe Cool moments in his day, so I'm not taking myself so seriously.”

“I'm a jazz musician, and I really wanted to not miss an opportunity to have the full connection to jazz.”

“I'm lucky that I enjoy touring as much as I do. I'm not going to make a living just making records.”

“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.”

“I'm thrilled when I hear the greatest jazz musicians. They continue to search in ways other musicians do not.”

“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.”

“It helps me to learn things in different languages, even if it's just phonetically, and to make myself vulnerable to other audiences by trying to reflect back to them the genius of their own cultures, and to do that, oftentimes, in new jazz settings, new arrangements. It's a way to show respect.”

“It must be a hellish thing to know what's possible in music, to be hearing things all the time and not have an appropriate outlet for them.”

“It's a beautiful thing to have time in the world, as a singer and as a musician, to make friends with people of the musical caliber of a Tommy Smith, an Arturo Sandoval, a Richard Galliano, a Till Broenner.”

“It's a lovely thing to have people in any circumstance appreciate your work.”

“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.”

“It's pretty rare in jazz to have a full-on steady band.”

“It's true that I'm not known as a crooner or balladeer. I'm known for a more crusading or quixotic temperament.”

“I've got more low notes than I had when I started.”

“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.”

“I've tried to learn as much as I can about the great jazz singers to understand what makes them important, vital artists, but there is always something more to learn.”

“I've worked with a number of big bands, but there's nothing in life like the Basie band.”

“Man, I just feel so fortunate to be a jazz musician at all. I have a hard time thinking of it any other way. It's such a fulfilling vocation. I love it.”

“'Man in the Air' was an experience in exercise.”

“Music is a physical expression that has a physical impact upon the listener. Sound travels in waves through the air. This is not abstract. This is scientific fact. And it makes physical contact with the eardrum... and with the heart... and with the rest of the body.”

“My goal is to be really incredible by the time I'm 70.”

“My intellect was quickened at divinity school, and my abilities to discern were strengthened, and that's always valuable.”

“My strength is to communicate with an audience and to know what jazz singing is capable of.”

“Of course we all know when music's too much in the head, and we define our greatest players by the way they are able to communicate directly from their emotional selves.”

“One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.”

“Out in L.A., things relax even further than they do in Chicago. There's such a looseness to it, and there's a potentially refreshing advantage to that.”

“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.”

“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.”

“People want to have access to jazz because it has a vibe that's very strong.”

“Romance is one of the things that most countries share, and I've noticed how different communities have their own ways of singing about love and heartbreak.”

“That's the thing: There are so many art songs in jazz. It's a much more rich experience for the singer than people think.”

“The idea is to be unrestrained by categories.”

“The musicians in Chicago gave me my vocation, but New York calls to a jazz musician, for sure. You want to test your mettle.”

“The singer is always an ambassador of music.”

“There are incredible musicians around the world.”

“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.”

“There's a spiritual complement to any attempt at transposing a commitment to humanity through music or art.”

“There's a wide spectrum of possibilities in how to deliver a song.”

“We all know that jazz demands a cultivation of the mind.”

“We live in a society where it's cool to be criminal.”

“When improvisation is properly applied, it is compositional thinking, sped way up.”

“While I revel in the memories of my own Grammy moment, I also know how it feels to walk away empty-handed.”

“Why limit yourself to one discipline or field of study?”

“You can start from any source material, and you can approach it with a jazz ear, and then it will become a jazz moment.”

“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.”

“You don't know what bravery is until you overcome fear.”

“You don't want to make records so you can win a Grammy. You make records because you want to be a musician.”

“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.”

“You want to be doing your best work whatever field of the arts you're in because your life's going to be over all too soon, and you have to make the most of it.”

“You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.”