I don't judge by the genre, I judge by the expressiveness of the music. Boring music is bad music, music that talks to me is beautiful music. There's great jazz and lousy jazz, beautiful fugues and ugly fugues.

When I speak or write, I use my whole vocabulary: phrases from my Beat days, my Army days, my Bebop days, so why not in music?

I'm highly trained in harmony and counterpoint, and I've also worked in bars, concert halls, modern dance concerts, from the sacred to the profane, churches to strip joints... and found beauty in it all.