Radio & Podcasts
Tune in daily to hear the internet's top jazz programs including Mondo Jazz, Jazz Bastard, World of Jazz, The Third Story, One Man's Jazz, Jazz at 100, Neon Jazz, A Broad Spectrum, Liner Notes and more. View our program schedule and check out the most recent JazzWeek Radio Chart.
Dida Pelled Wishes You Would...
by Leo Sidran
Dida Pelled became deeply immersed in jazz as a teenager in Tel Aviv, obsessing over guitarists like Grant Green and Wes Montgomery. But when she moved to New York nearly two decades ago, her artistic identity began to expand.In addition to establishing herself as a guitarist on the city's club scene, Pelled gradually stepped forward as a singer, songwriter, and bandleader, exploring a wider range of sounds and influences, from indie and Americana to straight-ahead jazz. She also ...
Continue ReadingKeren Ann: We Are Artists Because Of The Process
by Leo Sidran
Keren Ann was born in Israel, spent her early years in the Netherlands, and later moved to France. The daughter of a Russian-Jewish father and a Dutch--Javanese mother, she grew up multilingual and deeply aware that identity, language, and place are always in motion. She began writing songs as a teenager and, by her mid-twenties, was already making her living as a professional songwriter--thanks in part to an unexpected collaboration with the legendary French singer Henri Salvador, for ...
Continue ReadingKurt Elling: Manifesting the Music
by Leo Sidran
Kurt Elling first appeared on The Third Story podcast in 2016--nearly ten years ago now. In some ways, it feels like a lifetime ago. Back then, he had moved from his native jny: Chicago to New York and was living in Manhattan. The first Trump presidency, the pandemic, and the cascade of upheaval that would follow were not yet realities. Even then, Elling was already one of the most celebrated singers alive. This is what I wrote about ...
Continue ReadingRemembering Phil Upchurch
by Leo Sidran
Phil Upchurch was a musician's musician. Those who knew, knew. He played on over a thousand recordings, including some of the most iconic popular music ever made including Michael Jackson's Off The Wall, Donny Hathaway Live, Chaka Khan's “I'm Every Woman," Curtis Mayfield's Superfly, and George Benson's Breezin' to name only a few. He was there in the rooms where the sound of a generation was being created. As my dad, Ben Sidran, tells me in this conversation, “He went ...
Continue ReadingCoding the Self: Theo Bleckmann on Finding Your Own Language
by Leo Sidran
Theo Bleckmann has spent decades living in the space between: between categories, between careers, between composition and improvisation, even between apartments. Born in rural Germany, he trained as both a boy soprano and a competitive figure skater, before coming to New York at 23 to study with the legendary singer Sheila Jordan. Quickly he found a home among musical misfits. Since then, he has built a singular life in music that balances jazz, avant-garde experimentation, composition, performance art, and teaching. ...
Continue ReadingVera Brandes on Köln 75
by Leo Sidran
The Köln Concert (ECM) by Keith Jarrett is one of the most iconic recordings in jazz history--a completely improvised solo piano performance, recorded in 1975, that became both the best-selling solo album and the best-selling piano album of all time. And yet, the concert almost didn't happen. The new film Köln 75, directed by Brooklyn-based filmmaker Ido Fluk, tells the remarkable true story behind that night through the eyes of Vera Brandes, the 18-year-old German concert promoter whose ...
Continue ReadingLeonor Watling always wore many hats
by Leo Sidran
Leonor Watling grew up in jny: Madrid, just as Spain itself was waking up after four decades of dictatorship. Her father was a Spanish academic, her mother an Englishwoman raised in Africa. From the start, Leonor inhabited multiple worlds--speaking different languages, moving between cultures--yet never quite belonging fully to any one of them. She grew up with an unusual awareness of mortality. Her father was ill throughout her childhood. She lost two aunts in a car accident when ...
Continue ReadingThe Magic of Stella Cole
by Leo Sidran
Stella Cole didn't set out to become the face of a jazz revival. Growing up in Springfield, Illinois, she fell in love with The Wizard of Oz and movie musicals. By the time she reached college at Northwestern, she nearly abandoned singing altogether--discouraged by a culture that told her the “old" songs weren't marketable. Then the pandemic hit. Locked down at home, she turned back to the comfort movies and music of her childhood, and began posting short ...
Continue ReadingBen Sidran at 82: Still auditioning for the role of myself
by Leo Sidran
Every year on his birthday, my dad Ben Sidran and I sit down for a conversation. It started when he turned 76, and we've done it ever since--capturing an ongoing record of where his head and heart are at that particular moment. Over the years we've talked about music, memory, politics, travel, the craft of performing, and the art of living. These annual conversations have become a kind of time-lapse portrait: the same two people returning to the ...
Continue ReadingMoses Patrou on songwriting, survival, and his new album Confession of a Fool
by Leo Sidran
New York-based multi-instrumentalist Moses Patrou has quietly carved out a singular career over the last two decades--as a drummer, percussionist, singer, songwriter, organist, and sideman to many (including Amy Helm, Ben Sidran and Will Bernard). With the release of his new album Confession of a Fool, Patrou steps into the spotlight with what feels like a definitive personal statement--one shaped as much by life experience as by musical instinct. While his 2007 debut, Introducing Moses Patrou (which I ...
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