I started playing violin when I was five years old and part of that education was performing monthly all around South Florida. So, performing was part of the regimen. South Florida is incredibly culturally diverse; with those different cultures comes different types of music. At an early age I was exposed to a myriad of different musical styles including Latin, Afro-Cuban, and Haitian music. All of which are part of my "new sonic vision".

Definitely, and it already is. I'm still listening to the music of my generation and younger; everything that is on MTV, MTV2, and the radio. The fact is that classical music and pop music are both Western music, by that I mean they share the same musical culture, scales, and elements. A song by Eminem uses the same scale or notes that Bach used. In that, they're more related than not. There's a life lesson here: I teach my students that it's relatively simple to point out the differences between people, or music, but finding the similarities is the true art, and real life lesson.

According to the New York Resident, you do a lot to expose underprivileged kids to music. What has music been in your life and what are you trying to convey to kids about it?

Statistically speaking, I should be in prison. young, black, single; music is my "anti-drug". So, it's not an exaggeration to say that music both changed my life and saved my life. I hope music plays the same role for my students.

Rhythm. For musicians, rhythm is something that's fairly strict and rigid--literally, we use a metronome. A dancer's rhythm is much more fluid and changes over time. There's nothing rigid about it; it's much more human. In that notion, musicians become much more sophisticated in their approach to rhythm by working with dancers. As a great dance teacher once told me, "if you want to understand rhythm, watch a dancer's feet as they dance."