As a BLACK woman, I've always had to WORK hard to earn my respect as a MUSICIAN - and as a young woman, too. As a writer, in CERTAIN sessions or certain rooms PEOPLE think, 'Who's kid is this? Who's this little girl?' I've had to prove myself.

It's funny: I'm a lifelong musician, but because I principally PLAY the PIANO it's been a solitary THING.

I am not fundamentally a MUSICIAN, I am fundamentally a HUMAN being.

As a MUSICIAN, life is not over just because you are GETTING older, and so I FIND retirement a very frightening and DARK thought.

In the MUSICIAN, there is a tendency to have a narrowness. It's all compartmentalized. I am playing the violin; that's all I KNOW, nothing else, no education, no nothing. You just PRACTICE EVERY DAY.

Through SINGING, I met my second husband, Jonathan, who is a PROFESSIONAL musician. He TRANSFORMED our lives and relieved me of much of the strain that I had been carrying for so LONG.

The DIFFERENCE between NOISE and MUSIC is in what the MUSICIAN does with the SOUNDS.

I'm not a MUSICIAN MAKING WORDS to GO with my MUSIC.

I had a DEGREE in ECONOMICS but ALSO THOUGHT of myself as a MUSICIAN.

Playing the BEETHOVEN symphonies, for example, is a consummate EXPERIENCE for a musician because Beethoven speaks so DIRECTLY to who we are as PEOPLE.

My parents NEVER really WANTED me to be a musician at all, because in Peru you don't earn any money that way. But when they realised it was genuinely what I wanted to do, they supported me ALWAYS.

I MET MUSICIAN Ken Farmer in Lorne and he lent me all of his Bessie SMITH blues LPs. That's when I STARTED to SING.

I wouldn't EVEN begin to presume that the talent of an able actor is ANYTHING LIKE the TALENTS of a prodigious musician.

I've ALWAYS had a PASSION for music, but I never saw me as a MUSICIAN for a living. I never THOUGHT that I COULD make a living. It never dawned on me.

The way we GOT Phil Collins for 'Tarzan' was that we heard around the studio that he was looking for a DISNEY project, and we got him. It seemed like a perfect MATCH. Phil is a GREAT musician.