"Once you step on stage, the people are actually looking to be transformed. That's why they showed up..." — 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.

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

Are we, as humans, gaining any insight on how to talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context. So I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster.