281: Maria Schneider
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Grammy-winning composer and NEA Jazz Master Maria Schneider on 30 years of the Maria Schneider Orchestra, her life and career, from her small-town Minnesota roots to her groundbreaking collaboration with David Bowie and her fight for artists’ rights. Here she talks about how her music channels the wonder, mystery, and tension of her life experiences, her poetic creative process, her acclaimed album Data Lords, and her reflections on what’s next as she looks back on a remarkable journey.
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280: Ben Sidran | The Election
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Just like we did after the and elections, I spoke with my dad Ben Sidran this week about the latest presidential election. True to form, it is a conversation that appears to be about one thing but is in fact about many things. What begins as a somber acknowledgement of the election results turns quickly to a sprawling discussion of everything from Will and Ariel Durant’s massive 11-volume work, The Story of Civilization, Seinfeld, The First Council of Nicaea, Irving Berlin, Jack Kerouac, what separates humankind from the rest of the animal kingdom, bottle service at "the...
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279: Andrew Bird
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Andrew Bird has been on a quest for meaning in sound since childhood, starting with the violin at age four and earning a degree in violin performance from Northwestern University. His journey has taken him from classical and folk roots to the vibrant Chicago swing scene, to creative isolation in a barn in Western Illinois, and eventually to become a genre defying artist and composer with a unique voice. Andrew’s lyrics are both confessional and impressionist, often leading listeners on a journey through evocative imagery. With just a looping pedal, he reinvented his sound, blending...
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278: Aaron Goldberg
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Pianist Aaron Goldberg on 20 years of organizing jazz fundraisers for presidential campaigns (this year's was Jazz for Kamala), how he thinks about the potential of music to provoke personal transformation and political action, his own relationship with activism and progressive politics, concert curation, Israel and Gaza.
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277: Lucy Kalantari
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Family music artist Lucy Kalantari on the power of intention, why gardening is her favorite metaphor for living a creative life, staying curious, parenthood, her new record, and the Grammys.
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276: Riley Mulherkar
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Riley Mulherkar grew up in Seattle, the Pacific Northwest enclave that has been home to so many musical innovators over the years. He went to Garfield High School, a school that has fostered countless talents going all the way back to Quincy Jones who was himself a young trumpet player at the school in the 1940s. Riley was just eight years-old when he began seeing the legendary Garfield High School big-band play free gigs in his Seattle neighborhood; it’s one of the reasons he picked up the trumpet. He was clearly meant to play the instrument. By the time he got to Juilliard in New...
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275: Jesse Harris
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Jesse Harris belongs to a generation of New York singer songwriters who came of age in the late nineties. He has made over 20 solo albums that walk the line between folk, jazz, pop, Brazilian and art rock. He’s also a much sought after co writer and collaborator who has written songs for and or with many others like Madeleine Peyroux, Melody Gardot, Lana del Rey, and most famously Norah Jones. Jesse was already well into his career when he met a young Norah Jones on a road trip through Texas and played his songs for her. He had already been signed and dropped from a major label with...
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274: Ella Feingold
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Ella Rae Feingold is a guitar player, composer, orchestrator, educator and content creator. She has spent three decades devoted to the soulful side of the electric guitar, and has worked with an impressive list of artists, including Bruno Mars, Erykah Badu and Common, The Roots, Jay-Z, Janet Jackson, Alicia Keys, Jill Scott, Queen Latifah and many more. On her Instagram and TikTok she is a rhythm ambassador, focussing on the importance of groove, pocket and feel in her playing and demonstrating various techniques and traditions in rhythm guitar. Hearing Ella play and talk about music, it’s...
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273: Paula Cole
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Paula Cole on her early success, dreaming big, her life and career, the power of “the beginner’s mind”, the distinction between being an artist and an entertainer, the feeling of being pregnant with song, speaking for those who cannot speak, navigating a life in the music business, learning from young people, and her new album, Lo.
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272: Ben Sidran on Rainmaker
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
In a career spanning over fifty years and thirty five records, Ben Sidran has established himself as a philosopher poet. Equally celebrated for his precise, probing writing style as he is for his improvised spoken word jazz raps, he has carved out a truly unique space for himself. The Times of London aptly described Ben as “the world’s first existential jazz rapper,” and The Chicago Sun Times once referred to him as “a renaissance man cast adrift in the modern world.” He is one of a kind. And he is, of course, also my dad. There is no one else like Ben so it’s not...
info_outlineAni DiFranco began recording and self-releasing her music as a 20 year old in Buffalo, New York in 1990. 34 years later she is widely considered to be a feminist icon. But in many ways she emerged iconic, fully formed and fearless.
A facile lyricist with a biting honesty, she played guitar with a virtuosic, rhythmic style. And she was ahead of her time as an independent artist who owned all her own masters and controlled most of the major aspects of her career. She’s sometimes called the mother of the DIY movement.
DiFranco has released all of her albums (over twenty) on her Righteous Babe record label. The label has also put out projects for other distinguished singer songwriters including Andrew Bird, Utah Phillips, Arto Lindsay, and Anaïs Mitchell whose own Hadestown project was first released as an album on Righteous Babe before being transformed into the Broadway hit that it is today.
Ani Difranco’s most recent studio album Revolutionary Love came out in 2021. In 2022 she published a picture book for children called The Knowing which she described as “an Ani DiFranco-style lullaby, inviting young readers to ponder the distinction between outer forms of identity and the inner light of consciousness.” And she will join the cast of Hadestown on Broadway in February, playing the role of Persephone, a part she sang on Anais Mitchell’s original Righteous Babe recording in 2010. So it’s both her broadway debut and a fill circle moment.
In recent years Righteous Babe has released anniversary editions of Ani’s early recordings. In 2022 she revisited the 1998 album Little Plastic Castle, sharing anecdotes and memories of the making of it on social media, and playing some of the songs live. Her memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, was published in 2019.
Here she talks about how she sees her work today (“my job is connecting with people”), her early career (“it was relentless”), avoiding being labeled or boxed in (“I feel like a survivor of labels”), her idea of success (“successful artists are not necessarily the best selling”), raising children in an era of performative identity, practicing revolutionary love and why it’s easier to tell the truth than to hide yourself.
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0:00 Intro
12:00 Interview