“You make a record because you have to chart your progress, not only for yourself, but for your audience.”
- Jason Moran
“As an improviser, my nature is to take a theme and constantly rework it.”
“I'm a bit of a traditionalist, but I kind of mangle things as I perform in a contemporary way.”
“I feel like I'm a torchbearer for jazz, fostering its tradition but its future, too.”
“I am a huge fan of Adrian Piper: how she works, how she reveals her process in the work, how she writes about it.”
“I have that huge print from Pollock by the piano because the influence is reciprocal. He was into hearing music while he created, and I sometimes do the opposite. I'm influenced by everything from an ant to a dream.”
“Pianos - if they don't like what you're saying, then they won't talk back to you. And you want it to talk back to you.”
“As a listener, we're looking for that person who kind of excites the molecules within us - who knows how to tell the story that resonates deeply to our core and almost prompts us into action. Fats Waller has been that person for decades. When people need a lift, sometimes they go to him. I know I do.”
“Usually, when I see films that don't have any score attached to them, I think they're beautiful. I love just the naked sound of the voice. That's already music.”
“I'm lazy. I don't practice enough. I do other stuff. I'm not a musician's musician, and I don't necessarily know if I want to be. When I hear something and want to work on it, then that's what my project will be.”
“Jazz musicians don't make any money, so I might as well make some on the market. I pick my own stocks - Microsoft, Dell - the tech stocks, the breadwinners.”
“Bjork's album, 'Homogenic,' it's got beats, strings, traditional Icelandic stuff. That's my benchmark for what an album should sound like, right up there with Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' and Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On.'”
“My killer crossover project would be to combine Bjork and Grace Jones with the West Coast rappers and create this massive music. That's, like, one of my dreams.”
“I used to watch those rock videos where they would chainsaw the piano. And I thought, 'That's what I want to do.' I thought classical music was corny.”
