The Late Set

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Best Jazz of 2025 (So Far) Jun 24, 2025

Show notes

Don’t look now, but we’ve reached the midpoint of 2025 — and listened our way through well over a hundred albums, in search of elevated sounds. It feels like the right time for a progress report, so we’re sharing half a dozen of our leading contenders. Nate gives the nod to albums by pianist Myra Melford, alto saxophonist Steve Lehman, and pianist Sullivan Fortner. Josh brings his endorsement to releases by bassist John Clayton, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, and tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger. Along the way, they talk about a handful of other noteworthy recordings — and allude to some other highlights that await us in the latter half of the year.

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Into the Amazon, with Amaro Freitas Jun 10, 2025

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Amaro Freitas was born in Recife, on the northeastern coast of Brazil. He began playing the piano in church, discovering jazz after his first exposure to the music of Chick Corea. What Freitas has done since is a small miracle of syncretism: his style as a pianist and composer nods to the modern jazz tradition but also the sounds of Afro-Brazilian and indigenous music — and the music of nature, some of which he gathered in field recordings from the Amazon. Earlier this year, Freitas sat down with Josh Jackson during the Winter Jazzfest in New York, for a wide-open conversation about his album Y’Yand so much more. We know you’ll enjoy it.

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New Pinnacle, with Brandee Younger May 27, 2025

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The spiritual and the sensual find common cause in the music of Brandee Younger. As the world’s leading improvising harpist, she carries a torch for Alice Coltrane, whose astral meditations continue to light a path. But there’s also a place in Younger’s art for playfulness, even mischief — as she reminds us with Gadabout Season, her third album for Impulse! Records. Before a recent show at Solar Myth, part of Ars Nova Workshop’s 25th anniversary season, Younger sat down with The Late Set for this fun and far-ranging conversation. Weeks later, she’d be named a Doris Duke Artist and play Coltrane’s harp in a tribute at Carnegie Hall — making “New Pinnacle,” the title of a song on the new album, feel like a statement of fact.

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Run the Song, with Ben Ratliff May 12, 2025

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“Out quickly and on the move” — so begins a bracing new book by Ben Ratliff, the brilliant music critic and scholar. It’s titled Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening, and it follows Ratliff’s thoughtful line of inquiry as he brings music into his daily running practice. His guiding concern is the way that movement sharpens his perceptions: “Running and listening can illuminate each other,” he writes. In this episode, recorded in front of an audience at Solar Myth, Ratliff talks about this and other ideas in conversation with Nate Chinen, a friend and former colleague at the New York Times.

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Lost Coast, with Jenny Scheinman Apr 29, 2025

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Some artists can always be counted on to channel a sense of place. For violinist and composer Jenny Scheinman, it’s the homeward pull of Northern California’s so-called Lost Coast, between the redwood sprawl of Humboldt County and the rugged terrain that meets the Pacific. Scheinman grew up there, and she carries its rustic charm and mystique in her music — even when it assumes a form as elegant as the songs on All Species Parade, her recent double album. In this live episode, she converses with Josh Jackson before a recent performance with her band at Solar Myth, part of Ars Nova Workshop’s 25th anniversary season. Don’t forget to brush the sand out of your hair.

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Pilgrimage, with Wadada Leo Smith and Vijay Iyer Apr 15, 2025

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Few events embody the act of listening and receiving quite like the Big Ears Festival, which happens every spring in Knoxville, Tennessee. Nate was there this year, conducting artist interviews and taking in as much music as he could handle. He reports back with some highlights, and shares an interview he conducted just before heading down — with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and pianist Vijay Iyer, who have a new duo album, Defiant Life, and performed together at Big Ears. Their ideal of spontaneous creative communion, and engagement with the state of the world, feels right on time.

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Record Store Day Preview Apr 01, 2025

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April is Jazz Appreciation Month, and we’re celebrating just as we always do, by chasing down live music and supporting the scene. But we’re also looking ahead to Record Store Day, which falls on April 12. It will bring a fresh bounty of new releases —including a customary haul of archival discoveries in deluxe editions. So for this episode, we’re talking all about RSD: the ins and outs, the ups and downs. We’ll get into this year’s bonanza, with a particular focus on two amazing albums recorded by leading trumpeters at the Blue Morocco in 1967: Kenny Dorham’s Blue Bossa in the Bronx and Freddie Hubbard’s On Fire. This episode might just put a dent in your record budget. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

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Branches and Paths, with Renee Rosnes Mar 18, 2025

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Renee Rosnes has traced a momentous musical trajectory over the last 40 years. A pianist and composer of exceptional insight, she’s served apprenticeships with Joe Henderson, Wayne Shorter and Ron Carter, and earned rare stature among her peers. Almost a decade ago, she formed Artemis, an all-women cohort that just released its third album, Arboresque. Rosnes also has a new solo release, Crossing Paths — her first full-length album of Brazilian music, a longtime source of inspiration. (She enlisted two certified legends, Edu Lobo and Joyce Moreno, for the project.) In this conversation, Rosnes opens up about all of the above, as well as the “concrete ceiling” that female instrumentalists are forced to contend with, even now.

Renee Rosnes: Brazilian Dreams Come True (DownBeat)
A Jazz Quintet Bubbling With Good Vibes? Meet the Women of Artemis (NY Times)
Renee Rosnes on Piano Jazz (NPR)

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Let Her Cook, with Endea Owens Mar 04, 2025

Show notes

Endea Owens knew what she meant when she called her 2023 debut Feel Good Music. As a bassist, a bandleader and an organizer, she specializes in the kind of buoyant uplift that just won’t quit. You can see her putting this into practice most weeknights on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, as an engine of the house band. And you can feel it in her work with The Cookout, which has been both a working band and a model of community outreach. We talked about all of this and more with Endea at the 2025 Winter Jazzfest in New York. Stick around after the interview to hear Nate and Josh reflect on the legacy of jazz on late-night television, with a focus on Saturday Night Live as that show marks its 50th anniversary.

NPR: Bassist Endea Owens Cooks Up Jazz For The Community
NPR Music: Endea Owens and The Cookout: Tiny Desk Concert
Fresh Air: Questlove charts 50 years of 'SNL' musical hits (and misses)

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Poetry is the Process, with Aja Monet Feb 18, 2025

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There’s a heartstopping moment in “for sonia,” Aja Monet’s ruminative elegy for the revolutionary poet Sonia Sanchez, when she recalls uttering the word “poetry” at a community organizing meeting, only to be met with flustered refusal. “Who’s got time for poems when the world’s on fire?” she asks, either quoting a naysayer or posing the question to herself. The answer, of course, lies in the poems themselves — especially as Monet embodies and delivers them in partnership with a corps of intuitive improvisers. We sat down with her in New York the morning after her 2025 Winter Jazzfest performance, to talk about poetic practice, political necessity, musical imperatives — and the fires that were literally consuming her adopted city of Los Angeles. Don’t miss some deep truths from one of our most committed truth-tellers.

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