Relatives, friends, fans, and students often ask me what have been the inspiring influences in my development as a musician.

As far back as I can remember, my early influences in music were my mother as first teacher and my father as example of a fine tenor voice. As a child I was always singing, something as natural to me today as it was then, something that has drawn me to singers for as long as I can remember.

I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. Anthems, hymns, spirituals, and lining-out chants, all part of the African-American church experience, played their part in forming my musical aesthetic. Members of my family have told me about the times I came home from the service and played by ear all the music I had heard there.

There was also the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and other masters, with the Anna Magdalena Notebook one of my favorite albums. The works of Bach contain everything one needs in order to become a musician: intelligence, through the use of counterpoint, and emotion, from the strong spiritual influence in his music.

Gladys Wallace, my teacher at that time, instilled in me a love of varieties of music which remains with me still: the works of such composers as Beethoven, Clementi, Burgmuller, Chopin, and Nathanial Dett. She encouraged me to listen to such artists as José Iturbi - under whose direction I would one day be performing on celesta when he was directing the Kansas City Philharmonic years later.

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