John Mayer would be my ultimate collaboration because he's just the man. He has basically captured all I believe in with music.
The first piece of music that captured my imagination was probably Ray Charles Live At Newport.
Doo-wop is special music to me because it's so straightforward and melody-driven and captures emotions.
Jazz vision is the fusion of music and art a real paradox of same-yet different. Here we play in exchanges, like the hardness of the key of c# major and from the softness of Db major - capturing, reflecting and improvising.
I really like Caravan Palace's electro swing stuff. They incorporate the electronic, but when you see them live, they're all on stage playing live music. They're all playing their instruments. They drop these beats with the DJs that are so incredible.
In school, all my teachers and my mum were super routing for me to study at Oxford. I picked music as a career choice, and this didn't sit too well with them!
When you have a relationship with music, and it's that deeply a part of your life, it's so much more than a career choice for me. It's an extension of who I am.
The game of political music chairs and finger-pointing by career politicians and agency bureaucrats needs to end.
My mother was American, and my father was from the Caribbean, and there was a big open door into the world of humanity and music.
I wanted to keep pushing the musical ideas I had about jazz, music from Africa and the Caribbean.
As a youngster, my parents made me aware that all that was from the African Diaspora belonged to me. So I came in with Caribbean music, African music, Latin music, gospel music and blues.
I've always found music that is carnal very attractive but not in the most obvious way.
Everywhere in the world, music enhances a hall, with one exception: Carnegie Hall enhances the music.
You know the question: 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall?' Answer: 'Practise?' Well, in my case, I got there by not practising. I didn't finish my music degree. And when I got into the pop world, I decided not to conform because I figured that the point of being an artist was that you shouldn't be like anyone else.
Doing the acoustic at Carnegie is basically advised because electric music tends to get, let's just say, acoustically unsound.
I have to say that getting to tackle Maria in 'The Sound of Music' at Carnegie Hall was surreal. When I heard my voice, it was all I could do to keep myself from doing a British accent and sound like Julie Andrews!
I love Sam Mendes, but I went to see 'Spectre' with my kid, and the opening scene of the Dia de Muertos party, with this kind of tropical music, in downtown Mexico City, with all these people dancing like it's the Rio de Janeiro carnival... I had to laugh.
I grew up watching the films of 'Carousel' and 'Oklahoma' and 'The Music Man' and 'My Fair Lady' - all the classic musicals of that golden era, The sort of more modern musical theater, or what was modern when I was at a ripe teenage age, I wasn't really listening to that stuff. I was really more raised on the classics.
The 'Carousel' overture has always been one of my all-time favorite pieces of music.
In college, my voice never quite fit the classic ones like 'Music Man' or 'Carousel'.
