Mary Sweeney (from 2018)
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Throwback from 2018. Mary Sweeney needs some air. “There has to be a flow of fast and slow, and a pause to allow the listener or the spectator to digest and to project their own thoughts.” She thinks I should leave more space in my podcasts, to let it breathe. She tells me this as we sit in the screened in porch behind her summer house in Madison, Wisconsin. As she tells me this, cicadas chirp loudly, as if to underscore her point: “Today’s episode will not be edited! You will not remove us from this moment!” Mary Sweeney should know. She spent much of her career as a film...
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285: Jacob Collier's First Interview
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
In 2013, after having posted a series of videos recorded in his family home in North London of himself singing a cappella arrangements of classic - yet sometimes obscure - songs on YouTube, a critical mass began to form around Jacob Collier. His videos of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” and “Don’t You Worry Bout A Thing” were passed around by musicians and music enthusiasts and by 2014 he was being managed by Quincy Jones and traveling around the world. He was one of the first career artists to emerge on YouTube. Jacob’s journey since then has been nothing short of...
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284: Aaron Parks and Marta Sanchez
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Pianists Aaron Parks and Marta Sanchez on how music has helped them navigate life's complexities. Aaron talks about his move to Portugal, the release of his latest album Little Big III, and how addressing mental health shaped his journey. Marta reflects on leaving Madrid for New York and the deeply personal inspiration behind her album Perpetual Void.
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283: Samora Pinderhughes and Jack DeBoe
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Composer, pianist, vocalist, and multidisciplinary artist Samora Pinderhughes and drummer/producer Jack DeBoe on their long standing collaborative relationship, what happens when art confronts life’s heaviest themes, but the creators meet it with laughter, lightness, and trust. Captured at Winter Jazzfest in early 2024, Samora and Jack talk about the album Venus Smiles Not in the House of Tears, the transformative Healing Project, mental health, and how laughter becomes a tool of resilience in the face of struggle. It’s serious, it’s playful, and it’s deeply human.
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282: Allan Tannenbaum
The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
Allan Tannenbaum's career reads like a tapestry woven with history, art, and an extraordinary eye for the moment. From his serendipitous epiphany outside a post office in 1964 to becoming one of the most iconic photographers of his time. Starting with a handful of frames of Jimi Hendrix in the late 60s, Allan went on to chronicle the cultural pulse of 1970s New York as chief photographer for the SoHo Weekly News. He captured unforgettable images—Sid Vicious in handcuffs, Andy Warhol at Studio 54, Patti Smith, the Rolling Stones, John and Yoko, and many more. In the 80s and 90s, he...
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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.
info_outlineAfter college he began a period of working furiously on a kaleidoscopic range of projects and became an icon of the new sound of London jazz, which integrated African rhythms and modes, Caribbean and Middle eastern sounds and was largely danceable.
Shabaka himself has never fully embraced the jazz label. While the music is highly improvised, and it owes much to the American jazz tradition, his influences are very broad.
Over the course of the past decade, the majority of his touring and recorded work has been with three bands: Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming and Shabaka and the Ancestors. In these formations he displayed a fundamental approach to creative practice in different contexts spanning Afro-Caribbean fusion, London dance music club culture and the South African jazz tradition.
Part of his signature on the saxophone has been inspired by rappers, and his sound is often evocative of the human voice, conversational, expressive, and rhythmic.
A somewhat chance encounter with a flute maker in Japan several years ago led him to develop an interest in the Shakuhachi flute tradition, and during covid he committed himself to the flute. Last year he announced that he would be putting away his saxophone and ending all of his bands to dedicate himself almost exclusively to playing wooden flutes.
His latest release Perceive its beauty, Acknowledge its Grace (Impulse!) is his first full length album since making that transition. It’s more meditative, contemplative and introspective than his earlier work. But it’s still clearly Shabaka.
The album features appearances by pianist Jason Moran, drummer Nasheet Waits, harpists Brandee Younger and Charles Overton, vocalists Lianne La Havas, Moses Sumney and Saul Williams, string wizard Miguel Atwood Ferguson and percussionist Carlos Niño.
I talked to Shabaka earlier this year at Winter Jazzfest as he was embarking on a new adventure, both personally and musically. It was an absolutely fascinating conversation about his own creative development and philosophy, his new record, and why this historical moment is “showing the importance of slowing down, of patience, of contemplation.”