While it's a fact that a voice begins with natural talent, any talent must be nurtured, cajoled, wrestled with pampered, challenged, and, at every turn, examined.

When a human being without amplification makes a sound that is high and loud, it is almost unworldly.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

We are unique, each human voice, not because we are completely self-generated, but because of who we choose to assemble the countless factors that made us.

We sing with the entire body. The sounds that we make emanate not just from the head, but from the whole heart and soul, and, most important, the gut.

I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.

Everybody's a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. I mean, I've never arrived. I'm still learning all the time.

There's no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I'm performing.

Someone once said that there are probably seven naturally good singing days in a year-and those are days you won't be booked. What we must learn is how to sing through all the other days.

It is our responsibility to learn how to speak to an audience that is less informed about music, to give it a reason to want to come and see us instead of going to the movies.

I don't want to record anything unless it can be great and genuinely interesting.

To earn respect, you must earn your own self respect before you can expect others, to respect you.

When the world came to, it came, not to its senses, but to its madness.

I am searching for that which every man seeks-peace and rest.

Human crises have a way of happening at inconvenient times.

There can be no peace without justice, no justice without law and no meaningful law without a Court to decide what is just and lawful under any given circumstance.

What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?

Three weeks ago one of my dreams came true. I finally got to see something I always wanted to witness live. I finally saw someone get hit by a car... Nailed!

Involvement in the arts engages kids in their community, improves self-esteem, reclaims at-risk youth, and builds the creative skills that are required of a 21st century workforce

It is a well-known fact that we see the faults in other's works more readily than we do in our own.

Thank you for you consideration