I haven't a great jazz band, and I don't want one.
I prefer her [Nina Simone's] jazz period much more so than her folk period.
There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else's language.
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.
I'm a classically trained jazz pianist - I've been playing since I was 3 years old.
I'm comfortable singing jazz. The only thing I was concerned about is that everybody, even in jazz, has their own style. To me, the queen of doodling was Ella Fitzgerald, and scatting is something I never thought I could do.
Most jazz players work out their solos, at least to the extent that they have a very specific vocabulary.
When I hear the words jazz pianist, that just means I have the skills to do most things. Because to be a jazz pianist, even to be a bad jazz pianist, you have to be pretty good.
Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.
Artie Shaw was way ahead of most clarinetists and most jazz players.
I used to play too with a boy who played a saxophone. We didn't play no blues, we'd play a lot of love songs - 'Stardust', 'Blue Moon', 'Out Cold Again', 'Sophisticated Lady', 'Stars Fell On Alabama', a lot of different stuff.
A respectable-sized audience hasn't really been able to follow developments in jazz since the free jazz movement in the '60s. Some of them can't even get with John Coltrane. Audiences are diminishing more and more rapidly. Some of the top young musicians with something new to say can't get record companies to put out their stuff.
There's the tradition in jazz of having the Battle of the Bands, and you do not want to get your head cut when you're playing.
The other songs [of Billie Holiday] - "Body and Soul" is like the standard - I also wanted some songs that I knew I would sound good on, as a producer. It's been the same nine songs since I debuted it back in 2012.
The day of the great jazz improviser who doesn't know how to read music is over.
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.
It had a very good arrangement by Herbie Hancock, but it used existing pieces.
Why can't jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?
I have a big love for jazz music. The only thing I hated about singing with a jazz band was having to wear a gown to everything.
I'm not saying that in order to be a great jazz musician you have to be a great classical pianist first. But I am saying that it makes things easier when you can get around the instrument, and you have some idea of how to approach the various hurdles.
I'm always looking for ways to develop as an artist, especially as a jazz artist-to find different ways of testing my voice.
And I played in jazz band as well during all three years in school.
I'm a pianist - I studied jazz piano in college.
One interesting thing about jazz, or art in general, but jazz especially is such an individual art form in the sense that improvisation is such a big part of it, so it feels like it should be less soldiers in an army and more like free spirits melding. And yet, big band jazz has a real military side to it.
My strength is to communicate with an audience and to know what jazz singing is capable of.
