Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized and there's just no outlet, there's no venue for it, in terms of media.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized and there's just no outlet, there's no venue for it, in terms of media.

You're only as good as your last record.

When you have an acoustic bass in the ensemble it really changes the dynamic of the record because it kind of forces everybody to play with a greater degree of sensitivity and nuance because it just has a different kind of tone and spectrum than the electric bass.

Its all about finding the right note at the right place and knowing when to leave well enough alone. And that's a lifelong quest.

Well, I guess my unease with that is... I'm always a little uneasy with that phrase - smooth jazz, as opposed to what?

As a melody instrument player, it's all about getting from one note to the next, and those intervals and how you navigate your way through these vertical structures of chords. You realize that everything's moving forward, and it's all linear.

Everyone goes through the ups and downs of living - fretting about the future, worrying about what happened. Music teaches us how to be in the moment.

I always wanna be in the process of evolving and growing.

I became a musician because I love music, and that is what has sustained me; it's not because I thought it was a great way to make a living. Music saved my life.

I have pretty ecumenical tastes. I'm interested in a lot of different kinds of music, so I don't listen with a jaundiced ear to music because it's in a certain category, whether it's country or opera or hip-hop or bebop or whatever it is.

I look at the artistic process as like experiencing the world, channeling it through your personality and sending it back out there. That's the process.

I tend to play in a way that feels natural to me. To me that's authentic for myself. I play by where I'm led by some sense of where I feel I'm supposed to be.

I think 'Horace Silver' was actually the first live jazz group I ever heard back when I was a kid in St. Louis. So along with most players of my generation, I have a real affection for the music of 'Horace Silver.'

In most of the stuff that I've done over the years as a sideman, I wasn't really a session musician, because to me, a session musician is a guy who makes his living in the studio, and I never really did that.

In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn.

In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn. Don't dismiss something out of hand because you think it's either beneath you or outside of the realm of where your interests lie.

Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.

Jazz music should be inclusive. Smooth jazz to me rules out a certain kind of drama and a certain tension that I think all music needs. Especially jazz music, since improvising is one of the cornerstones of what jazz is. And when you smooth it out, you take all the drama out of it.

Music is just kind of an expression of who I am. It's what I do.

Music is like an open sky. You know it's out there... and there you are.

My drummer, Gene Lake, is Oliver Lake's son. So I certainly have wide tastes, in not only what I listen to, but what I play as well.

Ninety-nine percent of the music that was of any interest to me when I was growing up came out of the black community.

To me, the object of practicing is to allow you to play what you hear. But you're always hearing new things, so you never get to the end of it.

When I make records, I never listen to stuff after it's done. Ever.

When you're on stage, unless you surrender to the moment, you're not telling the truth. I look for people that tell me the truth.

While St. Louis is technically regarded as part of the Mid-West, it's actually - geographically and emotionally - more part of the South. I mean, the sensibility of St. Louis is really very much that of a Southern Mississippi river-town.

I think that that's the way the music grows and changes and becomes new and creative and vital. It's by synthesizing elements from all around it and not to maintain this kind of rigid myopic kind of tunnel vision, in a sense, trying to maintain a certain kind of purity, or whatever.

In certain areas where the media are still controlled, the changes have come to a halt, which is a very frustrating situation. I would like the changes to take place throughout China.

Well, I think that those of us in public life that are trying to do a good job, and that are faced with this popular new game that the media has of being critical of everything that anybody in public office does probably are thin-skinned.

The media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues. Poverty is a moral issue, it's a faith issue, it's a religious issue.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized and there's just no outlet, there's no venue for it, in terms of media.

I wish the Libertarian Party would get more play in the media but they don't.

For governments at war, the media is an instrument of war or an element in war that is to be controlled.

Don't hate the media, become the media.

I don't see it in terms of changing things, but rather using language and music as weapons for fighting a mainstream media which is predominately right wing, and loyal to the political framework and its corporate interests.

Navigation is power of a limited sort - it enables us to manage the immensity of the media torrent.

The status quo and the media is doing everything it can to fry children's brains and make them grow up maladjusted.

So, thanks God, our films, our first films were suddenly being appreciated by the Western media; especially France was very good, and Switzerland was very good.

Yeah, right. I mean, he criticises everybody in the media, then the first thing he does when he finishes is he goes to work for the media. Thompson, too. Hypocritical.

I want to thank all of the fans and media who made playing in the NFL such a wonderful experience. I have had the pleasure of meeting many of them.

I respect very much the role of the media in our society; I think they can be very, very helpful. They serve as a very useful check, sort of a watchdog over the actions of the government, and I respect that.

Common sense tells us that this explosion of media sources should eliminate any concern over a lack of diversity of views in the marketplace and competition.

In 35 years of being in the media, I've had all this mud flung at me many, many times. It's not the first time. It's nothing unusual. I've been through it all before and the best way to deal with it is not to read them.

It's clear that people are going to download media files, and they're going to talk to each other, and they're going to exchange information and knowledge and so forth. So this system logic is basically what you bounce off of.

The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.

The elite media has been caught in so many lies because of false statements that its whole reputation has eroded, their circulation is down, and their profits are down.

I have had some pretty wild nights! I think the media keeps a very close eye on what people are up to these days. I was out with George Clooney a few nights ago and we had a great time.

I think we've broken story after story that the rest of the media refused to break even when they had the story because they were scared of the story, or they just didn't think it was appropriate.