When I came up, there was room for the new and the old. For every new artist, an old one didn't have to be pushed out.
I'm not giving up my history and what I've done in my music because I love it and I'm very proud of it. I just want to open it up for more people.
The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn't be able to do that.
I've never felt opera was a party I've been invited to, and maybe I've got a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it.
Music is a language that should have no barriers.
I'm asked so many times why I think there aren't more female instrumentalists in jazz. But I never think about it. And I don't think it's been any harder for me to be taken seriously. The music speaks for itself.
I think it would be nice to see more of an open culture to different music.
I'd like to explode a few myths about what we call classical music. It's not high art for the titillation of a chosen few.
There's room for everybody. It's like crabs in the bucket - no pun intended, shout-out to k-os - but there's a lot of room for different types of Canadian music, cadences and influences.
There is a terrible conservatism, like a cancer, right in the heartlands of music-making, a tremendous resistance to change, an absolute horror of the idea that more people might connect with music. That infuriates me more than I can say.
We play melodic music, we play songs, we play all kinds of things and when you improvise you don't just shut out different languages, you use all the languages that you have.
Music of all arts should be expansive and inclusive.
You're always frustrated, you don't have the chance to do a song on the album, like the Beatles did with Ringo and George, or like Led Zeppelin, where everybody was given a chance to contribute. There never is a chance with the Stones.
It's exciting to share an art form that I would never have imagined sharing with the deaf community. Doing musicals, it's not like, 'Oh, I'll do a musical with a deaf person.'
You write a song; you know what you want it to sound like. With a band like ours, it's more about the collective. It's important everyone feels expressed and represented.
What we don't need in country music is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgement of what belongs and what doesn't.
