The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran
THE THIRD STORY podcast features long-form interviews with musicians, producers, writers and members of the creative class, hosted by Brooklyn-based musician, Leo Sidran. Their stories of discovery, loss, ambition, identity, risk, and reward are deeply moving and compelling for all of us as we embark on our own creative journeys.
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241: Andy Narell
02/08/2023
241: Andy Narell
Music is not only a form of expression, it’s also a way of traveling. It’s astounding how many people’s lives have been completely transformed by their relationship with music - and sometimes the simplest experiences we have as kids can profoundly alter the course of everything that follows. A few seemingly unrelated events during Andy Narell’s early childhood in New York helped to lay out a path for him to follow, and he’s still following it today. They included Joseph McCarthy’s “Red Scare”, a rise in gang violence in Harlem in the 1960s, and the innovations of a musical instrument maker from Trinidad named Ellie Mannette. Andy Narell is known as one of the most celebrated - if not the most celebrated steel - drummers in the world. Throughout a five plus decade career, he has contributed to both the development of steel drum music, and to the development of the drums themselves. Andy has appeared on hundreds of records and film scores, he’s been the subject of two documentary films himself, made nearly 20 records as a leader or co-leader. He’s an educator, an advocate, and an ambassador for the music, culture and traditions of Trinidad where steel drums - or pans as they’re called - were born. If you’ve ever heard the sound of steel drums on a record or a movie, chances are you’ve heard Andy Narell. His eventual partnership and friendship with Ellie Mannette, the so-called “father of the steel drum,” lasted until Mannette’s death in 2018. Andy’s contribution to steel drums is immeasurable, his love of the music of Trinidad is deep, and his friendship with Ellie Mannette seems to have been one of the most important relationships of his life. But beyond all that, beyond all the technical, musical, or even historical details, Andy is an example of someone whose devotion and love for a thing took him around the world and the steel drum was his mode of transportation. Here Andy shares his own personal story and also the story of the steel pan itself, the trajectory of calypso music from Trinidad to the UK and the US and then back to Trinidad. And he explains why he believes that “music is a powerful tool, and it’s revolutionary.”
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240: Will Page (Tarzan Economics)
01/24/2023
240: Will Page (Tarzan Economics)
Will Page was working for the UK Government Economic Service in the income tax division, and moonlighting as a music writer for Straight No Chaser magazine when his life changed almost overnight. Pretty soon he was living in London, and helping to shape the new music business and the economics of music streaming. Page eventually went on to work at Spotify where he was the chief economist. Will’s work is regularly featured in Billboard, The Economist and the Financial Times. His book Tarzan Economics was published in paperback this month, and retitled Pivot: Eight Principles for Transforming your Business in a Time of disruption. Here he discusses “how music responds to suppression,” the need to “press pause on nostalgia,” what qualifies as “content,” and the idea that “the internet can scale just about everything but one thing it can’t scale is intimacy. [And jazz] is an intimate form.”
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239: Rachael & Vilray
01/10/2023
239: Rachael & Vilray
Rachael & Vilray are a perfect example of the idea that sometimes what that once seemed old fashioned can actually resonate as new again. Their new record I Love A Love Song! comes out this week. Rachael Price is best known as the singer in the band Lake Street Dive. She and Vilray met at college two decades ago. But it would take them years before they discovered their mutual love of the American songbook standards from the 1930s and 40s, and decided to create a project to showcase Vilray’s special gift of channeling classic songwriters in his original music. We spoke recently about how this project came about, how they approach making original work in the mold of a musical tradition that is nearly a hundred years old,the art and craft of classic songwriting and getting the words right.
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238: Best of The Third Story on The Art of the Story, 2022
12/27/2022
238: Best of The Third Story on The Art of the Story, 2022
A collection of Art of the Story pieces for WBGO News by Leo Sidran / The Third Story Podcast from 2022, including coverage of the Montreal and Umbria jazz festivals (featuring Dave King, Julian Lage, Samara Joy, Matt Pierson, Terence Higgins, Gregory Porter, Kurt Elling, Dave Koz and more) as well as short profiles on Lau Noah, Michael Thurber, Tomasz Stanko, Tyshawn Sorey, Jesse Harris, Jorge Drexler, Christian McBride and Larry Goldings.
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237: The Ones That Got Away (2022 Holiday Edition)
12/21/2022
237: The Ones That Got Away (2022 Holiday Edition)
Every year, The Third Story collects more interviews and conversations than we are able to publish as full episodes, and 2022 was certainly no exception. Finally, we have found a solution: THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY, 2022 HOLIDAY EDITION. Conversations with saxophonist Bill McHenry, keyboard player/producer Didi Gutman, pianist Jon Dryden, pianist Dan Tepfer, trumpet player/graphic designer Jamie Breiwick, and pianist Randy Ingram with singer Aubrey Johnson, collected around the world this year.
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Larry Goldings Revisited
12/13/2022
Larry Goldings Revisited
What's so funny about Larry Goldings? He has been such a major musical force for so long, it’s hard to remember a time when he was not around. He’s one of the most accomplished, respected and admired hammond organ players alive and much of his career has been devoted to that instrument. The trio he formed in the early 90s with guitarist Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart has been one of the pillars of his musical life for over 30 years, and the three have remained United for decades. Their most recent record, Perpetual Pendulum, was released earlier this year. The recording session for the album marked the 30th anniversary of the release of their first record together - the 1991 album The Intimacy of the Blues. Larry eventually moved to the West Coast and carved out a reputation as not only a jazz musician but also a highly sensitive session player, sideman, collaborator, songwriter, and film composer. Goldings is also no stranger to social media: For years he has posted clips of himself - not only musical, but also what you might describe as schtick or comedy. His alter ego, Hans Groiner, for example, claims to be an Austrian accordion player, pianist, educator and Thelonious Monk specialist who has improved Monk's music by making it "more relaxing, and less offensive to the ear." In recent years he’s also become a regular fixture with Scary Pockets, the LA based YouTube famous funk collective. Larry Goldings and Scary Pockets even have their own side project called Scary Goldings, they’ve recorded a bunch of albums and videos together, and over time have brought in Larry’s longtime friend John Scofield to join them, as well as other viral superstars like MonoNeon and Louis Cole. In this conversation, originally recorded in 2016, Larry talks about his early development and influences, his ongoing relationship with Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart, working with John Scofield, James Taylor, Maceo Parker, Jon Hendricks, the New York - LA thing, his approach to accompaniment, organ playing and telling jokes on the bandstand. Music in this episode: John Scofield “Do Like Eddie”Goldings, Bernstein, Stewart “United”James Taylor “School Song”Johnny Bowtie Barstow “First Noel” Hans Groiner - YoutubeLarry Goldings “Ivermectin”Scary Goldings “Larry Pockets”Jon Hendricks “Freddie Freeloader”Christopher Hollyday “No Second Quarter”Larry Goldings Trio “The Intimacy of The Blues”Jaco Pastorious “Word Of Mouth”Dave McKenna “C Jam Blues”Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery “James and Wes”Peter Bernstein (feat. Larry Goldings) “While We’re Young”Chris Anderson “The Folks Who Live On The Hill”Jim Hall (feat. Larry Goldings) “Somewhere”Larry Young “Back Up”Billy Preston “Will It Go Round In Circles”Goldings, Bernstein, Stewart “Reflections In D”Weather Report “In A Silent Way”Jimmy Smith “The Sermon”Abdullah Ibrahim “Carnival”Maceo Parker “Shake Everything You Got”Maceo Parker “Pass The Peas”James Taylor “Country Road”
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235: Antonio Sanchez
12/01/2022
235: Antonio Sanchez
When drummer Antonio Sanchez released his album Bad Hombre back in 2017, he was responding to a few events that took place in his world at the same time. On a political level, the music was a response to the racism of the Trump campaign against Mexicans. In fact the title of the record Bad Hombre seemed to be an answer to Trump’s assertion that a wall needed to be built at the US Mexican border in order to get the “bad hombres” out of the US. An immigrant from Mexico himself, Sanchez reappropriated the phrase. Itseemed, in fact, to be a perfect fit for him because not only did it work as a form of resistance - by using the term he made his feelings clear without having to say too much about it - but it also borrowed from the jazz vernacular. You know, when musicians really respect someone, they will often refer to them as “bad”. And in that context, Antonio Sanchez is definitely a bad hombre. Sanchez moved to the US in his early 20s from his native Mexico to go to music school. One of his first teachers, the Panamanian born Danilo Perez, was a supporter, and their work together was one of the early launchpads for Antonio. While he was playing with Danilo, the guitarist Pat Metheny heard him, and that led to a musical relationship that has been at the center of his life for 20 years. Sanchez went on to become one of the most sought-after drummers on the international jazz scene. Has won four Grammys, and has been named Modern Drummer’s "Jazz Drummer of the Year” three times, and appeared on the covers of all the big jazz magazines. From early on he thought about drumming, and particularly soloing, as a form of storytelling. He says “I’m a sucker for a good story.” So it was only a matter of time before some great storyteller would find a way to use Antonio Sanchez’s drums to help tell a story. And that was exactly what happened when the Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñárritu asked Antonio to do an all drum score for his film Birdman in 2014. The film went on to win three academy awards and the score earned Antonio awards (including a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media) and nominations at the Golden Globe and BAFTA Awards. As significant as the awards and accolades were, maybe more significant was that the sound of Antonio’s drumming truly entered the zeitgeist after Birdman. And though he hadn’t planned for it to turn out that way, he realized that the level of expectation, curiosity, and even pressure on him to follow up that success with something equally resonant had risen. So when in 2017 Antonio went into his newly built home studio to record Bad Hombre, he had a lot of psychic energy stored up and ready to use. He made an entirely instrumental solo record, he played all the instruments and did what has become his trademark production work of mixing drones, samples, programming and live drumming. In fact the only collaborator on the record was his nonagenarian grandfather, the Mexican actor Ignacio López Tarso who appears on the first track. Five years, one pandemic, a few political cycles, and a handful of other projects later, he’s back this year with Shift: Bad Hombre Vol. II. This time the list of collaborators is a bit longer. Somewhere in the dense fog of the pandemic, Sanchez decided to ask some of his favorite singers and songwriters — for material he could deconstruct and reimagine. The result sees Dave Matthews & Pat Metheny, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Meshell Ndegeocello, Lila Downs, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Kimbra, Ana Tijoux, Becca Stevens, Silvana Estrada, MARO, Thana Alexa (who is his wife) & SONICA sitting in on their own tunes — or ideas co written by Sánchez. The idea of “shifting” might not only apply to the songs on Bad Hombre Vol. II, but also to a change in Antonio’s approach - In the first Bad Hombre release, he was extremely political. Over the years, his outrage and fury with Trump and the turmoil at the US–Mexican border muted – and Sánchez himself “shifted” how he thinks about what he does, and where he wants to go next. We talked recently about that search, the same one that started back in Mexico when he was a competitive gymnast, classical pianist and aspiring rock drummer and brought him all the way to where he is today, the Bad Hombre.
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234: Ibrahim Maalouf
11/15/2022
234: Ibrahim Maalouf
When Ibrahim Maalouf’s parents decided to move to Paris from Beirut in the early 1980s, it was meant to be temporary. The Lebanese civil war was raging and they chose to raise their family away from the violence. But the intention was always to return to Lebanon when the war ended. They did their best to educate their children in the traditional way, and because they were both musicians themselves, music was hugely important to them. They played arabic music in the house, and young Ibrahim studied classical arabic trumpet from the age of seven. His father, trumpeter Nassim Maalouf had even invented a special microtonal trumpet or "quarter tone trumpet", which makes it possible to play Arabic maqams on the trumpet, and Ibrahim developed his sound and style using that unique instrument. But as a young boy growing up in Paris in the 80s and 90s, he was also influenced by all the popular sounds around him - Michael Jackson, De La Soul, pop and soul music and dance. In the end, Maalouf's family stayed in Paris rather than returning to Lebanon, and Ibrahim has been processing that distance for much of his life. Ibrahim’s career has been, in many ways, an exploration of his two worlds. He has released 17 albums and became the first trumpet player to headline France's biggest arena. He's collaborated with everyone from Sting to Wynton Marsalis, 6 million people tuned into his Bastille Day performance in France last year. He has also written scores for many films. This year he released two albums. The first Queen of Sheba is a collaboration with Angelique Kidjo. The second Capacity to Love is a deep exploration of r&b and hip hop production for the first time in his career. It features De La Soul, D Smoke, Erick the Architect, plus jazz singer Gregory Porter, Tank and the Bangas and international stars from Europe, Africa and South America. The album opens with Charlie Chaplin's famous speech from The Dictator, and ends with a spoken word piece from Sharon Stone. Here he talks about his childhood in France, developing his sound and concept, making elevated popular music, embracing the historical moment, refusing to be limited by labels or genres, and what it means when Quincy Jones orders sushi. wbgo.org/studios
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Jorge Drexler
11/01/2022
Jorge Drexler
Jorge Drexler started out as a doctor in Uruguay but eventually emigrated to Spain to try his luck in music. 30 years later, he is widely considered to be one of the most influential Spanish language songwriters alive. He has recorded 15 albums, received 31 Latin Grammy nominations (he won 7 so far and he’s nominated for 9 more this year) and an Oscar win for his song “Al otro lado del rio” in 2005. He is currently on tour in the United States in support of his most recent album Tinta y Tiempo. Here we revisit two classic conversations with Drexler, recorded in 2016 and 2021.
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233: Tyshawn Sorey
10/04/2022
233: Tyshawn Sorey
Multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator Tyshawn Sorey on his latest recordings (Mesmerism and The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism), his recent composition “Monochromatic Light (Afterlife)”, making work that defies category, growing up in Newark, comedy as a form of self care, the radical idea of blackness, exploring alternative musical models, his photographic memory, the interaction between improvisation and composition, processing ancestral trauma through music, and bad Italian food. www.wbgo.org/studios
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232: Daniel Lanois
09/20/2022
232: Daniel Lanois
As one of the most acclaimed and influential producers of the modern era, Daniel Lanois helmed iconic albums for everyone from Bob Dylan and Neil Young to U2 and Peter Gabriel. As a prolific and critically acclaimed songwriter, he’s composed scores for Oscar-winning films and blockbuster video games in addition to releasing more than a dozen genre-bending solo records. Rolling Stone declared that his “unmistakable fingerprints are all over an entire wing of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”. Daniel’s own personal point of view informed and influenced a generation of music that still continues to resonate deeply today. Lanois is a searcher. He’s perpetually on the hunt for something else - trying to squeeze out another drop from the atmosphere. Which is how, this week, as he turns 71 years old, Daniel Lanois is releasing Player, Piano, his first project of instrumental piano music. The compositions are concise but highly textured - it’s a series of exotic instrumental performances and was recorded at Lanois’ studio in Toronto - a former Buddhist temple- with the help of his co-producer Dangerous Wayne Lorenz. Daniel and I spoke recently about his early development in Canada and how it influenced his work, his ongoing creative relationship with Brian Eno, why he likes to travel for work, his attraction to melancholy, projects with U2, Peter Gabriel, Brian Blade, Brian Eno, Rick James (yes, Rick James), Neil Young, Terence Malick, when to use the word “we”, the importance of silence, reconnecting with innocence, his production technique of turning “garnishing into a devotion” and why “contemporary work has more to do with vision” than with technology. www.wbgo.org/studios
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Remembering Peter Straub
09/13/2022
Remembering Peter Straub
Peter Straub was the best selling author of novels, short stories, novellas and essays. He passed away earlier this month at the age of 79. Peter started out with dreams of writing poetry and literary fiction. After publishing his first two novels, and two books of poetry, he finally asked himself the question that so many artists find themselves asking: how do I make a living at this? An agent suggested he try writing a “gothic novel”, advice that reoriented him for much of the rest of his career. His natural ability to write novels that, as he said, would be appealing to people who love Philip Roth and those who love Stephen King, connected with a huge audience that picked up what he was putting down over the course of many years. But before he became a writer in earnest he was a jazz lover. He discovered jazz as a boy growing up in Milwaukee in the late 1950s. He gravitated toward Dave Brubeck & Paul Desmond, Clifford Brown, Bill Evans and Miles. While the hip, swinging sounds of his favorite soloists followed him from stage to stage and page to page, there was something else that stayed with him as well: the darker moments of his childhood. A car accident that shaped his first years in school and left him alone and isolated in a body cast and a wheelchair, just as he was learning to read. He recovered, but it turned out to be a kind of catalyst for his career as a writer. And there was an even darker secret that he somehow managed to hide from even himself well into adulthood. In our conversation, originally recorded in 2017, we explored all of this. The through line of jazz and fiction, improvisation and writing, how the past stays with us into the present, and how watching his Norwegian farmer relatives taught him to write diligently. www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast
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231: Cyrille Aimée
09/06/2022
231: Cyrille Aimée
Long before singer Cyrille Aimée spent any time on the road she was already a citizen of the world. She grew up in a small French town, Samois-sur-Seine, but says that she never felt fully French. She never felt fully any one thing. Her mother is Dominican, her father is French, and she says that “when you’re a mixed culture, you’re kind of your own thing.” Samois-sur-Seine is very small but in the 1990s of Cyrille’s childhood it did have one claim to fame: it was the town where the legendary french gypsy jazz guitar player Django Reinhardt retired, and hosts an annual jazz festival in his honor. Musicians and fans alike descend on the town for the festival, and because of the ties to Django, some of them are Gypsies (Manouche in French). Riding her bike through town one summer day, Cyrille had a chance encounter with some young Gypsy kids that would lead to a friendship that ultimately changed her life. The Manouche taught her to sing, taught her to perform, taught her to improvise and see improvisation as not only a musical pursuit but also a kind of life goal. To watch Cyrille perform is to watch a kind of ecstatic manifestation. She’s very physically engaged, her whole body gets involved when she sings. She says that music was originally an extension of dance for her and that since her instrument is her body, dance is still a vital part of her singing. That physicality is part of her charm. She’s a natural performer. But she’s also an accomplished singer, dance or no dance. She is naturally in tune with the language of jazz, bebop, funk, and soul. She’s a precise and fluent scat singer, technical and soulful at the same time. Cyrille won awards and accolades along the way - she won the Montreux Jazz Festival Competition in 2007,was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2010, and she won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Competition in 2012. Her 2019 album Move On featured cover versions of songs by Stephen Sondheim. The album was praised by Sondheim himself and one of its songs, "Marry Me a Little", was nominated for a Grammy Award. And a live stream video of Cyrille on Emmet Cohen’s YouTube channel has racked up millions of views. Aimée released two albums in 2021, Petit Fleur recorded with Adonis Rose and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, and I’ll Be Seeing You, a collection of duets with her long time friend the guitarist Michael Valeanu. When she’s not on the road, Cyrille has been living between New Orleans and Costa Rica. We spoke about growing up in Samois-sur-Seine, what she learned from the Gypsies, moving to America, how to learn new languages, the importance of confronting and overcoming fear for creativity, how to be honest with the audience, and where to find good cheese.
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Creed Taylor from 2015
08/30/2022
Creed Taylor from 2015
Creed Taylor was an inspiration to generations of music lovers. He was behind some of the greatest records ever made. He passed away on August 22 at the age of 93. For forty years, Creed Taylor was one of a small handful of jazz record producers and label managers who shaped and defined the sound of jazz recording. Through his work with the Bethlehem, ABC, Impulse!, Verve, and CTI labels, he produced classic albums for countless artists. He introduced us to "The Girl From Ipanema," "Mister Magic" and showed us "The Blues and the Abstract Truth." He produced both hits and critically acclaimed albums, and his sound defined an era. He made the history (for us to study), set the bar (for us to dance on), and paved the road (that many are still on). Needless to say, it was an honor to talk to him! We met at his apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan in the summer of 2015 and talked about some of his most memorable experiences. www.wbgo.org/studios
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Louis Cato from 2018
08/23/2022
Louis Cato from 2018
Earlier this month Stephen Colbert made an announcement about his band. Jon Batiste would be leaving and Louis Cato would be the new musical director. For some, Louis Cato is not a familiar name. In fact he has been hiding in plain sight for years now, both as a member of Batiste’s Stay Human Late Show band and also as what he refers to as a super sideman. Louis Cato is living proof that some people are simply given a gift. Born in Lisbon, Portugal and raised mostly in North Carolina, Louis began playing drums at age 2. By the time he started high school he was a credible drummer, bassist, guitarist, trombone and tuba player. He found his way deeper and deeper into music despite the fact that, as he says, he was “raised in a bubble”. Louis didn’t hear secular music until he was almost 18 years old, but the music he learned in church, and the music he played in the church with his mother gave him a deep foundation for a career in music. When he did eventually hear the music and the musicians that would inform his professional journey, he quickly understood that he had a place in that world. Soon he was playing with the likes of Marcus Miller, John Scofield, Q-Tip, Snarky Puppy, Jon Batiste, and Bobby McFerrin among others. He joined the Late Show band when Colbert took over the job as host, back in 2015 and has been a regular on the show ever since. In this interview, done in 2018, Cato talked about the difference between making music in church and playing secular music, what it means to “learn what you already know” and how surviving a terrible tour-bus accident changed his outlook on life and music. www.wbgo.org/studios
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230: Ben Sidran at 79
08/14/2022
230: Ben Sidran at 79
For the fourth year in a row, I talked to my dad, musician/producer/journalist/philosopher in honor of his birthday. This time he’s turning 79 and we consider the sociological implications of mowing the lawn, Donald Fagen’s solo recordings, the significance of the 1960s in popular culture today, Pharoah Sanders album Pharoah’s First, interviews he conducted in the 1980s with Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins, the myth of Sisyphus, and his most recent album Swing State. www.bensidran.com
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229: John Medeski
08/09/2022
229: John Medeski
For John Medeski, music has always been about healing. "Music just kind of sucked me up," he says. "For me having music was a great way to deal with the hard things in life. "Best known as one-third of the avant-garde jazz / funk trio (aka MMW), Medeski began playing piano as a kid, growing up in Florida. By high school, he was sitting in with the likes of Jaco Pastorius and Mark Murphy. He lived in Boston for college, and then in New York in his 20s. But Medeski was always drawn to nature. "I learn a lot by being around things humans couldn’t create," he says. "Like trees and mountains. I just don't think humans are that clever or that important." Despite his love of the natural world, John is an innovative electronic (or at least electric) musician. He twists and squeezes the sound of his keyboards — distorting, filtering and processing the instruments to find unusual and sometimes otherworldly textures. Maybe that’s why he lists NASA’s recording of a black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster as one of his favorite recent musical discoveries. Medeski is a highly collaborative musician: in addition to MMW, he has been a part of numerous musical collectives including The Word, Mad Skillet, Hudson, Saint Disruption, and multiple John Zorn projects. We spoke recently about the healing power of music; what attracted him to music as a boy; his creative and professional development; and the moment in 1996 when MMW discovered their jam band audience.
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Noga Erez from 2020
08/02/2022
Noga Erez from 2020
Israeli singer Noga Erez thinks about the fallacy of authenticity, the advantages of creative limitations, the way personal stories can be perceived as political, and what it means to make music with your heart instead of your head. She started out as a jazz singer, performing and recording her original songs with a piano trio. Those recordings are long gone, lost in a pile of defective harddrives. But anyway, she decided that her original concept was too intellectual and that it was time to make something more intuitive. Encouraged by her musical (and personal) partner Ori Rousso, she wanted to make something that wasn’t so uncool. So she began producing tracks that straddle hip hop, pop. electronic, inspired by Bjork, Kendrick Lamar and Flying Lotus. Her first record, Off The Radar, came out in 2017 and featured the song “Dance While You Shoot” that was featured in an Apple commercial. The more organic live versions of the songs were meant as a kind of creative exercise during 2020 when touring came to a halt, but I really loved them, and as Noga explains it, so did a lot of her fans. We talked in the summer of 2020 about her career, starting as a jazz singer-songwriter and then transitioning to what she describes as “the music in my heart”, but also the curious relationship between Israel and the United States from the point of view of a contemporary Israeli pop act, what it means to be a political artist, whether or not music itself can really make a difference politically today, what it means to be “the offspring of limitation” and if the phrase “I don’t pop with that” actually exists or not. Also, an extensive tutorial on how to pronounce her name.
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228: Emmet Cohen
07/26/2022
228: Emmet Cohen
Within about a week of home quarantine in March 2020, pianist Emmet Cohen started live-streaming shows every Monday night from his apartment in Harlem. At first it was just Cohen and his bandmates, drummer Kyle Poole and bassist Russell Hall, set up in Cohen’s living room. Eventually they started inviting guests, and Emmet’s Place became one of the spots for live jazz in pandemic New York. Six months in, it had really caught on: the Emmet’s Place performance of “La Vie en Rose” featuring singer Cyrille Aimée has over 4 million views on Youtube. Since then, Emmet’s Place has become a kind of jazz incubator in New York; featured guests have included legends like Houston Person, Victor Lewis, Joe Lovano, Sheila Jordan, Randy Brecker, Regina Carter, Christian McBride, Nicholas Payton, and dozens more. Cohen has one foot planted in the future and the other in the past. Maybe that’s why he chose to call his most recent record Future Stride: as a nod to the stride piano that he loves and the modern world in which he lives. That tension between these two impulses, the old school and the new, is at the heart of the Emmet Cohen phenomenon. He’s deeply rooted in the jazz tradition, and believes in the importance of oral history and intergenerational connection. When he was in his 20s (not so long ago!) he made a series of albums, live interviews, and performances featuring jazz masters Jimmy Cobb, Ron Carter, Benny Golson, Albert “Tootie” Heath, and George Coleman. He called it the Master Legacy Series. Meanwhile, he’s an active digital citizen. He was quick to embrace streaming, NFTs, and direct-to-fan connection. (He offers a subscription service to his fans to support his work directly.) He’s a product of the 21st century and he understands how to thrive in both physical and virtual space. We got together recently to talk about how he straddles the line between tradition and modernity, starting out as a prodigy in Miami, being a “repertory player,” his community in Harlem, “blues therapy” and the common lesson he learned from all his mentors. The Third Story is made in partnership with WBGO Studios. www.wbgo.org/studios
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227: Umbria Jazz
07/19/2022
227: Umbria Jazz
Although the conditions that created jazz are distinctly American, without Europe it seems clear that it might not survive. Every summer hundreds of the greatest practitioners of the music and hundreds of thousands of fans gather across Europe at the major festivals to come together and celebrate it. These gatherings provide a much needed opportunity for what the musicians refer to as “the hang”. Producer Matt Pierson explained it this way: “It is an American music and we love our homeland but in reality if you ignore the borders, the base of most jazz adjacent music is in Europe… You get to do a lot of hanging.” I spent a day at Umbria, hanging and exploring. Conversations with Matt Pierson, artistic consultant Enzo Capua, drummer Terence Higgens, saxophonist Dave Koz, and singer Kurt Elling help to illuminate the situation. www.wbgo.org/studios
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226: Montreal Jazz Festival
07/12/2022
226: Montreal Jazz Festival
After a two-year slowdown due to COVID, the Montreal International Jazz Festival came back this year. I had been there a couple times, in and out, as a musician. I went this year to cover the festival's full return for WBGO and The Third Story. When you’re a musician at a festival like MJF, the job is actually pretty clear. You get to the gig, play the gig, pack up and go to the next gig. But what does a member of the press do in this situation? I was given a credential badge to wear with the word JOURNALISTE written on it and an assignment to “find the story.” Pretty quickly, a narrative started to reveal itself. Or rather, several narratives, all classics. The story of the young versus the old. The story about the past versus the present. And ultimately, the story of today’s community of musicians, what’s on their mind as they travel this Silk Road of Rhythm which is the summer jazz festival circuit —from Montreal to Marciac, from North Sea to Umbria and beyond. Conversations with Dee Dee Bridgewater, Bill Charlap, Scott Colley, Aaron Goldberg, Samara Joy, Allison Miller, Gregory Porter, and various concert-goers, festival organizers and locals all helped to fill in the story. Self-expression, politics, social media, technology, and conservationism were all part of the fabric, but the common thread between all of them was one of empathy and communion. “This Music,” as so many of the musicians call it, represents human potential. And humans are complicated beings. But at our core, we are social beings and that is reflected in this Montreal Jazz Festival experience. www.wbgo.org/studios
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Julian Lage from 2021
07/05/2022
Julian Lage from 2021
When Julian Lage plays guitar, it’s hard not to get swept up in it. His relationship with the instrument is natural and contagious. Maybe that’s because it’s been with him for most of his life. When he was just 8 years old, Julian was the subject of an Academy Award nominated documentary film called Jules at Eight. Before he entered his teens, he had already performed with Carlos Santana and jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton While still in highschool he was a faculty member of the Stanford Jazz Workshop. Lage plays like someone in love. Despite his productive personal relationship with singer-songwriter Margret Glaspy - who produced his forthcoming album on Blue Note View with a Room - perhaps the deepest love affair of his life may in fact be with the guitar itself. In this conversation from last year, we talked about his 2021 release Squint, which Glaspy produced with Armand Hirsch - his first on Blue Note, which he recorded with drummer Dave King and bassist Jorge Roeder. He told me how he traversed those murky waters of youthful exceptionalism and came out on the other side - with more sensitivity, to the music, to his audience, and to himself. During the course of the conversation, Julian also described the connection between the artist and the audience and how he thinks about notes as having the weight of speech. “I want it to feel like I’m talking to you when I play.” The Third Story is a collaboration with WBGO Studios.
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225: Stacey Kent
06/28/2022
225: Stacey Kent
Singer Stacey Kent says she tends to be attracted to the “feeling of unrest,” and she thinks that her fans like to feel it too. Over the course of a 30 year career that has produced over 20 albums (including including the Grammy-nominated Breakfast On The Morning Tram), Stacey has mined that feeling again and again in different ways. Maybe she understands how to express the complicated emotions around identity, romance, displacement and longing because she has lived them so fully herself. Raised in New Jersey, Stacey moved to England for graduate school. Almost immediately she met saxophonist Jim Tomlinson and the two set out together to build a life both personal and professional. As Stacey describes it, meeting Jim was a major inflection point in her life and it’s clear that the relationship between the two is at the center of the story. Eventually, they befriended the Japanese born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, which has led to an ongoing creative partnership between Tomlinson and Ishiguro who compose original songs for Stacey’s repertoire. In this conversation, recorded on location at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London we talk about why she’s a fatalist, escaping from New Jersey and from the bounds of category, crossing borders (in many senses), and her latest release Songs From Other Places. The Third Story is made in partnership with WBGO Studios.
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Donald Fagen from 2019
06/21/2022
Donald Fagen from 2019
Just when you think you know all there is to know about Donald Fagen, he surprises you. There are legendary stories, traded like playing cards in chat rooms, fanzines, and merch lines. Along with his musical partner, the late Walter Becker (who passed away in 2017), Fagen influenced countless musicians, producers and songwriters by setting the gold standard in record production and arrangement with his band Steely Dan. This is known. There are the solo records, including The Nightfly (released in 1982), which was nominated for seven Grammys and continues to serve as a reference for hi-fi aficionados around the world 30 years on. This is known. Much is known about Donald Fagen and his work, it’s true. But much is still left to be revealed. Stage fright, a general aversion to appearing on television (he and Becker lacked the large heads and “swaths of cheek” that they felt necessary to really make it on the small screen), and nearly 20 years with no touring created a mystique that endures to this day, despite the fact that they’ve toured regularly since the mid 90s. So Donald can surprise you. He does it not by telling you what happened, but rather what he thinks about it. Or more to the point, how he thinks about it. He tells you that Steely Dan has “more in common with punk than with the confessional California singer songwriters” that they were often compared to. He tells you why Stravinsky was a precursor to funk music. He tells you what’s postmodern about his music, why making his first solo record was so personally disruptive to him, how he falls asleep, when he decided to finally grow up, and who he never wants to see again. This conversation was recorded in summer of 2019. This summer, Steely Dan is back out on the road playing to crowds of delighted fans around the country. The Third Story is now a collaboration with listener supported WBGO Studios. Visit to find out more about their award winning podcasts. If you like what you hear, please consider leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts.
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224: Ryan Lerman
06/14/2022
224: Ryan Lerman
Ryan Lerman has a few tricks up his sleeve. Best known as the cofounder of Scary Pockets, a dynamic funk band from LA who came to prominence on YouTube, Ryan is also an accomplished singer songwriter, bassist, arranger and producer. His early work with Michael Bublé, John Legend, Vanessa Carlton and Ben Folds prepared him for a career as a session player, and his early solo records showcased his plain spoken, plaintive and soulful connection to the human condition. Lerman met his Scary Pockets cofounder Jack Conte when the two were still in high school in Marin County, California. It’s a relationship that has informed and influenced him musically and professionally since then. He says that they “tend to be systems level thinkers” who “focus on the process instead of the outcome.” That kind of process oriented approach has paid off: Scary Pockets and Lerman are extremely productive: they have released at least one new video each week since 2017, racked up millions of views and a loyal audience of funk enthusiasts around the world. They’ve recorded hundreds of songs featuring a continuously rotating line up of quality musicians and singers. Collaborators have included many former guests of this podcast including Jacob Collier, Louis Cato, Louis Cole, Tyler Duncan, Joey Dosik, Larry Goldings, Caleb Hawley, Cory Henry, Theo Katzman, Lawrence, Adam Levy, Monica Martin, Jake Sherman, Antwaun Stanley, Jack Stratton, and Cory Wong. Here he talks about his happy place (“in the middle of business thinking and artistry”), what he learned about leadership by working as a sideman, how tried to become a lawyer but ended up playing funk music instead, and what minor nine chords have to do with any of it.
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Lionel Loueke (WBGO Studios Preview)
05/31/2022
Lionel Loueke (WBGO Studios Preview)
When Lionel Loueke was coming of age as a young guitar player in his home country of Benin in West Africa, there were no music stores of any kind. He would have had to travel to Nigeria, the next country over, just to get his hands on some new strings. So he made due with what he had, cleaning and soaking, reusing his strings and even going so far as to tie knots in them when they broke. Loueke’s story is the stuff of legend. After finally getting his hands on a guitar as a teenager, he put together enough technique and understanding to get himself to the Ivory Coast to attend music school, and then managed to get to Paris for further musical study. Eventually he went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and then to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA in Los Angeles, now called the Herbie Hancock Institute, where he had the opportunity to study and work with luminaries like Hancock, Terence Blanchard and Wayne Shorter. Soon he began to work with those same mentors, appearing on albums by Blanchard and Hancock. Since then, he has gone on to play with an incredible list of the most creative and influential players alive. Today he lives in Luxembourg, teaches at the Jazz Campus in Basel, Switzerland, and in non-COVID times, tours and records relentlessly. A brief scan of his recent solo work tells the story: In 2019 he released an ambitious album aptly named The Journey — the title referring to his odyssey while also mirroring his musical development. He followed that up in 2020 with a much more intimate album called HH, featuring solo guitar performances, punctuated by vocals and vocal percussion, of Herbie Hancock compositions. And last year saw the widespread release of Close Your Eyes, originally issued only on vinyl several years ago; it’s a more loosely structured blowing record of classic repertoire, in musical conversation with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland. Loueke tells me that after trying as hard as possible to remove the African influences from his playing and sound more like his jazz heroes, he ultimately realized that they were all compatible, and began to reintroduce more of the sounds of his childhood into his approach. The result is a very personal, musical, and emotional sound. I think maybe that’s what makes him such an appealing collaborator. His voice is so identifiable and personal, but you can feel the road that he has traveled in his playing. In fact, he ends up telling me exactly that. “Our story is what we play,” he says, “the story of somebody from the beginning to the time they play; that’s what we are presenting.” We spoke recently about growing up in Benin; discovering the guitar, and eventually jazz, by way of a George Benson record; making his way out of Africa, through France, to America; finding his voice and his style; how he sees his contribution as a teacher; and much more. This is the final in a month of encore episodes as part of a new partnership between The Third Story and WBGO Studios. In June, new episodes will drop every other week.
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Eric Harland (WBGO Studios Preview)
05/24/2022
Eric Harland (WBGO Studios Preview)
We’re back with another classic episode from the archive in honor of the new partnership between this podcast and listener supported WBGO Studios. All month I’m revisiting some of my favorite episodes from over the years, and starting in June I’ll be back with all new fresh episodes. You can find these at www.wbgo.org/studios where you will also discover their ever expanding selection of hipster content. And if you want to dig on the full Third Story archive, you can find that at www.third-story.com where we’ve always been. Eric Harland thinks about time. He thinks about taking time, he thinks about giving time, and he thinks about sharing time. He’ll tell you: “Time is a joint effort. It’s everybody at once. You want to talk about synergy, alliance, brotherhood and sisterhood? Just watch people getting together and having to play time. So much shows up in that. There’s so much judgment, so much blame. But then you get to these points of surrender and ecstasy. Something wonderful happens because you went on this journey together. It’s so revealing and it’s so fulfilling.” Eric Harland is one of the most in demand jazz drummers of his generation. He has played with everybody. Betty Carter, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Michael Brecker, Terrence Blanchard, Wayne Shorter, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Esperanza Spalding, Taylor Eigsti, Julian Lage, Robert Glasper, Joshua Redman, Dave Holland, Chris Potter, Charles Lloyd, John Mayer, and on and on and on. He has appeared on over 400 recordings, and continues to appear at the top of critics’ and readers’ polls. Plus he once played a solo so intense that it sent my wife to the hospital. Here he shares his incredible story of growing up in Houston and how he came to weigh 400lbs by the time he was 16 (he eventually lost the weight in college), attending the Manhattan School of Music, becoming an ordained minister, living with singer Betty Carter (“not like that”), learning from legendary mentors, and exploring “time”. He also shares his thoughts on practice, community, natural wine, and what you can learn about a person by how they drive.
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223: Matthew Stevens
05/21/2022
223: Matthew Stevens
The fact that he grew up in Toronto is not necessarily crucial to understanding guitarist Matthew Stevens point of view. He’s regarded to be one of "most exciting up-and-coming jazz guitarists" in his generation, in any part of the world. His songs and guitar playing are featured on albums by the likes of Christian Scott, Esperanza Spalding, Terri Lyne Carrington, Dave Douglas, Linda Oh, Harvey Mason. He has worked as a guitarist with producers Quincy Jones, Glen Ballard and Tony Visconti. As a producer himself, he worked on Esperanza Spalding’s albums Exposure and the Grammy winning 12 Little Spells and on Terri Lyne Carrington’s Grammy nominated album Waiting Game. In addition to his solo recordings, he has also made three albums with Walter Smith III who I spoke to recently: they call the project In Common, and on each record they call together a different collection of collaborators to round out the group. The most recent In Common project came out earlier this year on Whirlwind Recordings and features Dave Holland, Terri Lyne Carrington and Kris Davis. Matthew gets around. I think it’s because he’s so open, and so collaborative. He brings his personality to all his projects, but he’s clearly also very sensitive and empathic. And maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with Canada. Describing his own musical development, he speaks very affectionately and knowingly about a whole community of guitar players in and around Toronto - a school of playing that I admit, I didn’t know so much about before we talked. So many of the players he named share a kind of gentle, swinging sophistication, elegance but also a little bit of grit. I think Matt has applied some of that to his playing - he’s certainly not afraid of some distortion - his sound is often very gritty - but even when he rocks out, I hope he’ll forgive me for saying this - there’s still a kind of gentleness to it. He’s a nice guy, and it shows up in the music. We spoke recently about Canada, how the business of jazz has evolved in his lifetime, how the pandemic reoriented him both personally and musically, gear, practice, teaching, the local scenes in Toronto and Pittsburgh, and one of my favorite topics: what is production?
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Bob Power (WBGO Studios Preview)
05/17/2022
Bob Power (WBGO Studios Preview)
What do A Tribe Called Quest, David Byrne, The Roots, D’Angelo, Pat Metheny, Erykah Badu, Jason Moran, Me’Shell N’degéocello, India.Arie, J Dilla, Run DMC, and Theo Croker have in common? They all benefited from the sound of ’s recording, mixing or production. Bob has had a profound effect on the sound of Hip Hop and modern music in general. Despite the fact that he says “I learned early on from working in television that if someone notices your work, you’re probably screwed,” I did notice what he was doing and I think a lot of people did. He has degrees in classical composition and jazz performance, and spent his early professional years both gigging and composing music for television. He was 30 years old and living in San Francisco when he decided to move to where the action was in the music business at the time: New York. An unexpected gig as a recording engineer for early rap sessions ended up re-orienting Bob’s career. He says he thinks he was one of the few people in the recording establishment who took the new music seriously and cared enough to make it as good as possible, even though it was being made in a different way (using samples, drum machines and intuition). He tells me, “Great music is made by people who either don’t care or don’t understand what is ‘normal’ so they do something extraordinary.” And he says, “In popular music, wrong has become right, and we love it.” Talking to Bob, one gets the sense that his contribution has been multi-fold. Part of it is indeed the sound that he gets. It’s undeniable that his records have a sound: it’s in the depth of his mixes, the way they round and present, deep and forward at the same time. They have dimension. He tells me, “Just being able to hear everything in a mix is a lifetime of study.” But the other part of what he offers in the room is his way. It’s his personality. Bob is happy to talk about his technical approach, the way he thinks about recording, mixing, and mastering. But he is equally happy - maybe even more so - to talk about pop sociology, Marshall McLuhan, Malcolm Gladwell, Timothy Leary and larger cultural trends of the the last 50 years. He says, “The state of the art in electronic media, the bar is very high. So making things fluid in the creative atmosphere is the thing.” Bob teaches at NYU and it would seem that teaching and producing are related to him. He tells me, “I want my students to see that there’s all different flavors of good.” And he says, “A lot of artists want to show all the different things they can do. No! Show the one thing that you do that is totally yours and no one else can do, and then find every way in the world to exploit and enrich that.” We got together in his studio back in February of 2020 to talk about history, technology, fat beats, staying in your lane, and keeping things fluid. This is the third in a month of encore episodes as part of a new partnership between The Third Story and WBGO Studios. During the month of May, you’ll find another episode from The Third Story archive at wbgo.org/studios and then in June, new episodes will drop every other week.
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Jason Moran (WBGO Studios Preview)
05/10/2022
Jason Moran (WBGO Studios Preview)
Jason Moran is so prolific and multifaceted that any attempt to summarize his career poses a daunting challenge. Now think about what it’s like preparing for a conversation with him. He’s a composer, conceptual artist, educator, and public intellectual with a critical disposition — critical in the sense of challenging the status quo, while still respecting the accomplishments of his mentors. First and foremost, he’s a piano player who straddles avant-garde jazz, the blues, classical music, stride piano, and hip-hop. In other words, he’s just an incredibly thoughtful person. Moran is interested in reframing and reassessing the relationship between music, history, and place. When we spoke for this episode of The Third Story, in the spring of 2020, he was in the midst of curating an exhibition at the Louis Armstrong House Museum. Given that fact and what was happening at the time, I was particularly interested to know how he was dealing with social distancing and isolation. Our conversation is both a snapshot of that moment in time and a sweeping consideration of many of the larger themes in his work. Among other things, he talks here about coming up in Houston among a generation of jazz innovators; the idea of truth versus passion; promoting the “Freedom Principle”; America’s unfortunate way of forgetting the past; what it means for African American musicians to move freely “from the stage to the table”; the power dynamic within choosing repertoire; what Thelonious Monk and KRS-1 have in common; what we still have to learn from Louis Armstrong; and what it means to be the “personal embodiment of your history.” This is the second in a month of encore episodes as part of a new partnership between The Third Story and WBGO Studios. During the month of May, you’ll find another episode from The Third Story archive at wbgo.org/studios and then in June, new episodes will drop every other week.
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