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

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

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.

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.

There are incredible musicians around the world.

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.

The idea is to be unrestrained by categories.

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

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

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.