"I'm a prime example of a person who loves hip-hop, and I will defend it till the day I die." — Jason Moran

While my friends were outside practising to be Tony Hawk or Michael Jordan, I was inside playing Mozart, increasingly disillusioned and bored.

It's important that the art forms communicate, whether it's the dance program with the jazz program or the classical program with the opera program, that these conversations becomes fluid.

Once you step on stage, the people are actually looking to be transformed. That's why they showed up; that's why they spent some money. And great performances do that.

I love Mozart, and I love Bach, and Brahms, and - but at 13, I didn't understand any of that that I was playing.