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.

Sullivan Fortner: The Music Tells You Where to Go

by Leo Sidran
September 16, 2026

It is hard to overstate the exuberance and awe expressed by other musicians when talking about Sullivan Fortner. At under 40 years old, he is one of a small handful of pianists who have moved the instrument and its potential forward. And by doing so, he's demonstrated that innovation can happen from within the tradition of what came before rather than reinventing it outright. To those who know, he is both a living reality and, as a jazz ...

Folk and Futurism with Sofia Rei

by Leo Sidran
September 9, 2026

Argentine singer, composer and producer Sofía Rei talks about leaving Buenos Aires and rediscovering the music of home, moving beyond the boundaries of jazz, embracing electronics and production, and learning from collaborators and students. Her new album, Antónima (GroundUP), brings those threads together through what she calls “Folk and Futurism" a meeting place for tradition, technology and a distinctly contemporary musical identity. ...

Ashley Kahn on the Miracles and Wonder of Paul Simon’s Graceland

by Leo Sidran
August 26, 2026

Forty years ago this month, Paul Simon released Graceland, an album that became one of the defining records of his career, and one of the most celebrated and debated albums of its era.The story famously begins with a cassette of South African township music that Simon couldn't stop listening to. He followed that sound to Johannesburg, where he began recording with local musicians, eventually building an album that also incorporated zydeco, Norteño music, gospel and the sounds of ...

Ben Sidran At 83: “Entropy Is Inevitable, But The Antidote Is Available”

by Leo Sidran
August 19, 2026

Last week my father, Ben Sidran, turned 83rd, and as I do every year, I talked to him for The Third Story podcast.These annual conversations have become a tradition, a way of tracking our relationship, and an artist, over time.Ben is a jazz musician, producer, writer and broadcaster. He was once described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “a Renaissance man cast adrift in the modern world." This year, I came across a 1974 DownBeat cover story ...

Julieta Venegas Has A Good Memory

by Leo Sidran
May 20, 2026

Julieta Venegas grew up in Tijuana, a city that sits at Mexico's northwestern edge and the United States' southwestern edge. Maybe it makes sense that someone raised in a city suspended between identities would resist fixed categories herself. Julieta Venegas has spent much of her career moving fluidly between musical worlds. Like Tijuana itself, Julieta seems most comfortable in the in-between. She was born in 1970 in Long Beach California, and raised in Tijuana. Her parents ...

Dida Pelled Wishes You Would...

by Leo Sidran
May 7, 2026

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 ...

Keren Ann: We Are Artists Because Of The Process

by Leo Sidran
January 31, 2026

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 ...

Kurt Elling: Manifesting the Music

by Leo Sidran
January 12, 2026

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 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 him ...

Remembering Phil Upchurch

by Leo Sidran
December 9, 2025

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 ...

Coding the Self: Theo Bleckmann on Finding Your Own Language

by Leo Sidran
November 13, 2025

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. ...