And you first got into jazz when you were twelve? Anything particular spark your…?
Yeah, I heard Ahmad Jamal on TV, then I heard Nina Simone on TV, and both of them rocked my world completely.
Really? What was it about the…?
Nina Simone? It was just this dark, dark ambiance she had that really attracted me. I was into horror films also, so it was almost like the musical equivalent of the horror films. I was really into it, and there was just something so dark but yet so resonant about her, and I really just enjoyed her touch on the piano, ’cause there was something about her. I didn’t, like, put this into words in my head, but when I do an archeology of what actually went through my mind, I think what fascinated me about it was when she played, it was just Nina Simone music. And I could tell that she had classical training, I could tell that she knew the blues, I could tell that she had an understanding of folk music because she covered some Bob Dylan songs or whatever. But whatever she played, it became her idiom; it was like—bam!—it was Nina Simone music, and it was almost like she transcended idioms and was just this strong personality in and of herself. So, without knowing that was what attracted me to it, I think that was what really drew me into her world, plus the actual physics of it, like the darkness of it.
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