I decided years ago that I wasn't interested in being a virtuoso of the piano.

So my parents, particularly my mother, she noticed that I seemed to be interested, so on my seventh birthday my parents got me a piano.

I started playing piano when I was 7. And I started with classical lessons. Then I really got exposed to jazz.

I'm always interested in looking forward toward the future. Carving out new ways of looking at things.

I've always been interested in science. I used to take watches apart and clocks apart, and there's little screws, and a little this and that, and I found out if I dropped one of them, that thing ain't gonna work.

Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept. He and Bill Evans, and Ravel and Gil Evans, finally. You know, that's where it really came from. Almost all of the harmony that I play can be traced to one of those four people and whoever their influences were.