I grew up in Kansas City from when I was about two years old to my mid-teens. Kansas City at the time was an amazing place, because there was so much music going on there. As a kid, I was playing there all the time and learning a lot about music.

Basically, my mother is a piano teacher, and she actually teaches piano at Yamaha School of Music today. She's a really, really amazing human being and is very patient. She had enough patience for me, as a kid, which I'm very thankful for. She made sure that music was a part of my general education as well.

My mom was a musician, and my dad had this passion for music. That's kind of how a lot of their relationship was built. When I came around, I was constantly exposed to music.

My dad would play me all of these records: Miles Davis records, John Coltrane records, Bill Evans records, a lot of jazz records. My first exposure to music was listening to jazz records.

The main thing about the word jazz, is that it's very limiting to what people are doing.

When I was four, I started taking lessons from my mom. That's pretty much how I started.