Lizz Wright

Making a record and being a touring artist is about cooperation between spirit, craft, emotion, and focus.

Jazz has a lot to do with being very present. You know the structure, then you flow through it.

Salt' is like this snapshot in midair, an action shot. It's about my relationship with the church, the classical and choral music that I dealt with in school, and my new introduction to jazz. It's very hard for me to listen to from beginning to end, because I hear how lost I was.

I love singing all types of genres.

Music is primal: when it's done without pretension, you can really feel the shape of someone's soul.

I'm a real Otis Redding fan, and I just think he sounds so good. He sounds like he's always at the end of a long day, and he just won't give up. I just love his wearied devotion - that beautiful, beautiful, weathered sound.

I never left jazz. The relationship between structure and improvisation - that constant conversation and tension - I've always wanted in every genre and song that I perform.

I live just above a creek, and it's always very active. It almost sounds like the ocean. It's constant, and there's lots of big rocks in it, so it's got a great sound. It's one of my favorite things.

The truth is, when you want a great show, it's not 'entertaining' the audience - it's you sharing with them... an experience of communion.

I've begun to realize, as I'm getting older, that I was taught to go for a certain kind of stillness to get things done. I missed that in my life. I loved my grandmother's property, out in South Georgia right above the Florida line, so I just thought I'd find some property where I could feel that again.

I really just want an audience that is willing to let me live my life and share with them what I get out of my life.

Life is good. It might not go the way we plan it, but that's fine. We just do what we can.