Charity, like poetry, should be cultivated, if only for its being graceful.
There's another way of making music, by touching the lives and feelings of ordinary people.
The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically.
Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.
I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.
Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.
What was once underground is now coming to the surface.
Events become feelings, feelings become events
If we are not using our brains' capacity for challenge it feels to me as though it atrophies like an unused muscle.
Politics is pop. Our job as comedians - especially me, as a late-night talk show, which is a broader audience - is to amplify what we think America is thinking.
Religious life has to become an expression of the gifts of the person. (You don't) simply throw away your personality, your giftedness and leave everything at the gate and go in and expect to find Jesus.