New Orleans might have something to do with that, Cage said. Going back was a catharsis, and the city's spirit helped inspire his performance, he said.

"New Orleans is not like any place else in the world. It was colonized by the French and Spanish, it has these African energies, and all these things sort of roll into one to create this genius loci, which is the reason we have jazz," Cage said.

"I felt that I could embrace that, and that I could maybe have a bit of jazz, or my understanding of jazz, in the delivery. Which, my understanding is, that you know the lines so well that you go off-page and you improvise, and you can riff, and you can soak that energy up if you're willing to listen to it. And that's what I think happened."