The Third Story with Leo Sidran

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Jason Moran (WBGO Studios Preview) May 10, 2022

Show notes

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.

https://www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story www.third-story.com

222: Walter Smith III May 07, 2022

Show notes

From an early age, Walter Smith III began taking music very seriously. "My first gig was playing at a McDonalds in Houston with another saxophone player. I took a solo on "Blue Bossa." It was terrible. People clapped, and I figured if I could get away with that and get applause, how could I fail?"

Although it may appear Smith is a new voice on the scene, he is widely recognized as an adept performer, accomplished composer, and inspired educator. This spring, Smith welcomes his newest release, In Common III. The boundary pushing album features some of the most important and talked about musicians in the world - Matt Stevens, Kris Davis, Dave Holland and Terri Lyne Carrington.

Smith has developed under the wings of many of the music's greats. Walter is/has been a member of several legendary groups (recording and/or touring) including the Roy Haynes Fountain of Youth Band, Terence Blanchard Quintet, Eric Harland's "Voyager", Bill Stewart Trio, Jason Moran's In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall, Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet, the Christian McBride "Situation", Marquis Hill "New Gospel Revisited", Gerald Clayton Quintet, Christian Scott group and the Sean Jones Quintet to name a few.

Smith has performed all over the world participating in virtually every international festival as well as famed venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Village Vanguard, and the Kennedy Center. In addition, he has shared the stage and/or appeared on recordings with many important artists including Mulgrew Miller, Billy Childs, Joe Lovano, Herbie Hancock, Maria Schneider, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Terri Lyne Carrington, Ralph Peterson, and a host of others. To date, Walter has appeared on over 100 recordings that are released worldwide.

Originally from Houston, TX, Smith now resides in Boston, MA and is Chair of Woodwinds at Berklee College of Music helping to prepare the next generation of young artists.

We spoke recently about his early development, the Houston sound, his thoughts on education, practice, improvisation, leadership, raising a family as a musician, meeting your heroes, and LA real estate.

www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

Jon Batiste (WBGO Studios Preview) May 03, 2022

Show notes

Before he reigned supreme at the Grammy Awards, before he was an Oscar-winning composer (for Pixar's Soul), before he was bandleader for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and well before he'd become one of the rare jazz artists considered a household name, Jon Batiste was simply a rising star of the piano, making what he called "social music." Batiste hails from Kenner, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. He was born into a musical family, and thrust into the mix at an early age, singing and playing drums. At around 11, he switched from drums to piano, and never looked back. Eventually he moved to New York to go to Julliard. But while he was still in New Orleans, he studied and played with Alvin Batiste, who he says taught him to "Be you, even if it's the most obtuse thing. Do that rather than imitate something else..." And that original lesson has guided him throughout his life and career. While he was still in school, Batiste started to work as a sideman for jazz artists including Abbey Lincoln, Roy Hargrove, Cassandra Wilson, and Wynton Marsalis. He learned about leadership and collaboration from all of them. And it's in this space of artistic awakening in his 20s, when he begins to assert himself fully, that we find him in this episode. Recorded in 2014, our conversation tells Jon's origin story, his early influences and experiences, his philosophy of music and of leadership. This episode also marks the beginning of a partnership between The Third Story and WBGO Studios. During the month of May, you'll find another episode from The Third Story archive each week at wbgo.org/studios and then in June, new episodes will drop every other week. www.wbgo.org/studios www.third-story.com

221: Michelle Willis Apr 16, 2022

Show notes

Michelle Willis is either already one of your favorite singer-songwriters, or she's about to be one.

If you haven't already discovered her from her work with Snarky Puppy, Becca Stevens, or David Crosby, prepare to fall in love with her intelligent, soulful, emotive singing, writing and playing.

Her latest record, Just One Voice invites us into a world of doubt, anxiety, hope, balance and letting go—a process Michelle Willis skillfully guides us through with arresting arrangements that seem complex, but are deceptively simple—just like her subject matter. It features guest appearances by Michael McDonald, David Crosby, Gregoire Maret, Becca Stevens and Taylor Ashton, and was produced by Fab Dupont.

We spoke recently about growing up in Canada, how she thinks about her music and her career, how working extensively with David Crosby has affected her, teaching songwriting, imposter syndrome, getting the right "blend", the job of the songwriter, reading poetry, and whether or not it's okay to be comfortable.

www.third-story.com www.patreon.com www.michellewillis.ca

220: Nate Craig Apr 06, 2022

Show notes

Nate Craig is an internationally touring comedian. He plays "Phil" in the Netflix series "Maniac" and was a cast member on TruTV's "World's Dumbest". He was recently featured on Comedy Central's "Roast Battle" and AXS Gotham Comedy Live. Nate has appearances on Comedy Central's Tosh.0 and "Mash-up", which he also wrote for. He's written for 3 seasons of "Ridiculousness" on MTV.

Nate has been featured at the Bridgetown, RIOT LA, and HBO Las Vegas Comedy Festivals, and has headlined the "Laugh Your Asheville Off" and "San Francisco Comedy and Burrito Festivals". He's been on "You Made it Weird" with Pete Holmes, has written for "A Prairie Home Companion" with Garrison Keillor, and was featured on the "Best of the Bob & Tom Radio Show". He does theater tours with Bill Burr, headlines all over the country and has multiple full length comedy albums available.

We got together recently to talk about the parallels between music and comedy, what is the "job" of a comic, how "what's funny" has changed over the last 25 years, the "contract" between audiences and comics, how he got started and what it means to be successful as a comic today.

www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.natecraig.com/

219: Lauren Henderson Mar 30, 2022

Show notes

Vocalist Lauren Henderson is unusual in all the best ways. Described as "somewhere between a comforting whisper and a cogent declaration" by The New York Times, she sings with an intimate, sultry, haunting intensity. Her music might be mysterious, but she is an open book.

Raised in Marblehead, Massachusetts (birthplace of the American Navy and just down the road from Salem, MA) she attended some of the finest schools in New England. She was a varsity field hockey player at Wheaton College, and then went on to receive her MBA from Brown University. She spent much of her early life being one of the few people of color in a largely white environment.

She says her journey of discovering and celebrating her heritage has gone hand in hand with her music career. She describes it as uncovering "the layers of her diverse background in English and Spanish. Her compositions paint stories reflecting journeys imposed through the African Diaspora in connection to Henderson's Panamanian, Montserratian, and vast Caribbean roots as they interplay with her North American upbringing."

Almost immediately after meeting her for the first time in 2017, I was inspired to write the song "From The Inside Out" for her to sing, and we ended up performing it as a duo on her 2019 release Alma Oscura.

Lauren Henderson is a kind of classic character wandering through the modern world. She is incredibly poised, elegant, and hip. She's often dressed to the nines, full makeup and hair, ready for her closeup at any moment. She plays with some of the finest musicians today - notably she has worked for over a decade with pianist Sullivan Fortner.

Lauren is also a proudly independent, sharply focused business woman who produces her records, runs her own label and until recently has booked her own tours. Often I feel like she was sent here from another time - I just can't decide if it's the past or the future.

So today, we get the story. Lauren Henderson tells it to us, from the inside out.

www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.laurenhendersonmusic.com

218: Jake Sherman Mar 22, 2022

Show notes

Jake Sherman is everywhere at once and yet somehow maintains a certain air of mystery. There he is singing romantic 80s inspired jams. Here he comes making a jazz Hammond organ record at Dizzy's Coca-Cola Club and jamming with Larry Goldings. Don't look now but he's hanging out in LA with his friends in Scary Pockets, or with his project Jake and Abe (a duo with drummer Abe Rounds). Is that him playing on the new Rosalia record? Wait, he plays harmonica? With Jacob Collier?

Maybe you heard him playing with Meshell Ndegeocello, Andrew Bird, Emily King, Bilal, Nick Hakim, or Chance the Rapper.

Yes, all of this is true. But who is Jake Sherman really?

Born in Boston, Jake learned classical piano by listening to his father play Bach every morning. If not for an intervention - stumbling upon the catalog of Weird Al Yankovic at 11 years old - he would have followed in his father's path or perhaps become a jazz purist. But Weird Al changed everything. Fast forward some years beyond his time studying at Berklee College of Music and it's clear Jake has found a way to combine his appreciation of great songwriting with his piano/organ-playing prowess.

We spoke recently about his love of the hammond organ and Weird Al Yankovic, surrealist comedy, finding his lane, learning to sing, what he learned from Dr. Lonnie Smith, why LA is too sunny, making friends with social media, and why he keeps saying ladies' names in his songs.

www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.thejakesherman.com/

217: Melissa Aldana Mar 12, 2022

Show notes

Saxophonist Melissa Aldana on growing up in Chile, her journey to America, practicing, teaching, numerology, playing the blues, "the gender thing", learning to embrace imperfection, her new record "12 Stars", her idea of success, and what she values most in music: sound, time and ideas.

www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.melissaaldana.net

216: David Poe Feb 22, 2022

Show notes

David Poe is a songwriter's songwriter. He refers to himself as "a songwriter of a certain age". As a young man in Dayton, Ohio he got his first taste of success by winning a talent competition and using his prize (free studio time) to record what would become his first radio hit. That was back when a young musician might dream of a big record contract. He sings in a new song "Now I'm part of history, when the music cost money but the water was free." He has covered a lot of road since then and logged a lot of miles as a performing solo artist, producer, songwriter, collaborator, lecturer, and creative thinker. David Poe is a kind of Zelig-like figure who appears where you least expect him, and somehow manages to fit right in wherever he shows up. At the same time, his songwriting and singing are distinctive, personal and cultivated. Talking to Poe, one is reminded that at their best, songwriters are our popular philosophers. Rather than creating a diversion from everyday life, they illuminate the human struggle, and elevate the human experience.

David might be confused for a rock and roll guy, but what he does defies genre. He's a songwriter who is dedicated to writing authentic music and "carrying the torch" of those who came before. He tells me "the song doesn't need to be true, it just needs to be honest."

His plain spoken manner has a way of underselling the depth of his ideas. He tells me, for example, that "a culture that declares art to be disposable will get disposable art." But he says it casually, with a smile on his face.

We spoke recently about his philosophy on songcraft, collaboration, art and commerce, New York in the 90s (he worked at CBGBs Gallery for years) and why his new motto is "don't hate fun".

www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.davidpoe.com/

215: Amir ElSaffar Feb 07, 2022

Show notes

Amir ElSaffar has spent much of his life in search of the ecstatic moments that help connect to something bigger. In his case, he does this through his relationship with music and culture.

Trying to define or even explain what he does is not so simple, even for him. He leads five ensembles and has released seven albums over the past 16 years. His primary instrument is the trumpet, and he has devoted much of his career to expanding the vocabulary of the instrument. He also sings in the Arabic maqam idiom and plays the santur, the Iraqi hammered dulcimer.

As a composer and band leader, he's devoted to what he calls "transcultural creation" in which he explores the space in between jazz, Iraqi Maqam music, and various other musical traditions from around the world, which have included Spanish flamenco, and Egyptian tarab.

In late 2021 he released The Other Shore with his Rivers of Sound ensemble.

We spoke recently about his ongoing search for the ecstatic by way of what he describes as the human "sea of connectivity", how working with Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa and Cecil Taylor influenced him, the value of coming of age in Chicago, and how his Zen Buddhist practice has helped him to "lift the veil" between his sense of what's outside of him and what's inside.

www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.amirelsaffar.com/

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