Results for "Leo Sidran"

Stop Me If You've Heard It Before: Musicians Telling Jokes

by Leo Sidran
April 20, 2020

What do we need right now in these adverse times? We turn to our spirit guides, our philosopher kings, our rabbis: the musicians. Because although this particular form of adversity is new, musicians have been choosing to feel good in spite of adverse conditions for a long time. In this episode, we explore the ...

The COVID Chronicles, Vol. 1

by Leo Sidran
March 16, 2020

How is Coronavirus impacting the creative class? What happens when musicians lose their primary income overnight? What opportunities are there for creativity in this moment of social distancing? What is the conversation for performing musicians, online creators, and artists? How is it different in countries with a social safety net? Victoria Canal, Jack Conte, ...

Michael League: "Hang on to the little victories"

by Leo Sidran
March 9, 2020

In this podcast interview, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Michael League talks about Snarky Puppy, the advantages to the American musical perspective ("we are light on our feet"), why “to create something authentic isn't really possible to me," how playing wedding and steak house gigs in Texas taught him about “humility and strengthening the muscles of versatility," ...

Leo Sidran

I'm a multi instrumentalist musician, producer, arranger, composer, recording artist, and podcast host.

I was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, which is sometimes referred to as 70 square miles surrounded by reality. My father, Ben Sidran, another multifaceted music man, provided my early musical sustenance. My mother, a weaver and travel agent, provided texture and safe passage.

I got my start writing songs professionally as a teenager when the Steve Miller Band recorded four of my songs for their 1993 Wide River album. My father was working with Miller at the time, which is how I made the connection, but even then, at the ripe old age of 15, I was interested in production. So, Steve invited me to play keyboards, guitars and drums on the record.

Kat Edmonson on the quiet power of having a dream

by Leo Sidran
February 10, 2020

In this podcast interview, singer/songwriter/actress Kat Edmonson details her journey out of the Lone Star State and into the Big Apple, her love of old well-made things, working with Woody Allen and Al Schmitt, listening to Blossom Dearie, loving “the limitations in a room," acting vs singing, her new record Dreamers Do, and not asking permission. ...

Mark Guiliana: Sound Is Everything

by Leo Sidran
January 27, 2020

Drummer Mark Guiliana is having at this very moment a profound influence on the way the drums are played. Here he explains his ideas of coincidental interaction, and proactive repetition ("Repetition is one of the most powerful tools that we have in music and in life," he tells me), the importance of familial relationships with his ...

Steven Bernstein, Peter Apfelbaum and Will Bernard: From the East Bay to the Avant Garde

by Leo Sidran
January 20, 2020

Steven Bernstein, Peter Apfelbaum and Will Bernard on looking forward, looking back, the musical concept of opposition, defying category, broken mirrors, free improvisation, why coffee is so expensive and music is so cheap, the musical conversation between Berkeley and New York, spontaneous composition, rock and roll, Jewish weddings, Sly Stone, Bill Laswell, Trey Anastasio, and why ...

Zev Feldman: The Jazz Detective Speaks

by Leo Sidran
December 17, 2019

In this podcast conversation, record producer Zev Feldman explains how he got started in the jazz business as a young man (in his early 20s) and came up through the ranks of sales ("schlepping a bag of CDs"), merchandising, marketing, distribution -all of the pieces of the business as it existed at the end of the ...

ALA.NI on preserving the present moment in music

by Leo Sidran
November 18, 2019

In this podcast interview, singer-songwriter ALA.NI talks about job of the artist ("to see the world through a different lens and then share that experience"), why she moved to France ("I feel seen here"), improvised circle singing ("when we enter back into the child and the imagination, there's no rules!") and the genetic memory of violence ...

Camila Meza on the nature of translation, improvisation & self observation

by Leo Sidran
November 7, 2019