Question and Answer

How do you learn to tell your own story as a musician?

The best music that I've heard is so deeply intertwined with the soul and the spirit and the experiences of the musician that's playing it that, once again, the idea of idiom becomes obsolete. That's what I respond to the most: a musician who's playing the music that he or she loves so much that they would die if they didn't play that way, matched with music that's maybe just a little bit too hard for them. That's an important element. Musicians need the feeling of challenge. That's one of the reasons why, when you hear jazz guys trying to play rock & roll, it sounds funny, because it's not "the thing" for them. But that's a whole other subject [laughs]