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The Montreal Jazz Festival Is Back In Full Swing
by Leo Sidran
After a two-year slowdown due to COVID, the Montreal International Jazz Festival came back this year. I had been there a couple times, in and out, as a musician. I went this year to cover the festival's full return for The Third Story. When you're a musician at a festival like MJF, the job ...
Stacey Kent reflects on tension, collaboration, and the art of interpretation
by Leo Sidran
Stacey Kent says she tends to be attracted to the “feeling of unrest," and she thinks that her fans like to feel it too. Over the course of a 30 year career that has produced over 20 albums (including including the Grammy-nominated Breakfast On The Morning Tram), Stacey has mined that feeling again and again in ...
Ryan Lerman Of Scary Pockets On Trusting The Process And Viral Fame
by Leo Sidran
Ryan Lerman has a few tricks up his sleeve. Best known as the co-founder of Scary Pockets, a dynamic funk band from LA who came to prominence on YouTube, Ryan is also an accomplished singer songwriter, bassist, arranger and producer. Here he talks about his happy place ("in the middle of business thinking and artistry"), what ...
Matthew Stevens: on collaboration, production, gear and career
by Leo Sidran
Walter Smith III: Listen To The Young Players
by Leo Sidran
From an early age, Walter Smith III began taking music very seriously. “My first gig was playing at a McDonalds in Houston]} with another saxophonist. 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?" <br /><br ...
Lauren Henderson: From the Inside Out
by Leo Sidran
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 ...
Jake Sherman Gets Sexy
by Leo Sidran
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 Club and jamming with Larry Goldings. Don't look now but he's hanging out in LA with his friends in Scary Pockets, or ...
Melissa Aldana: Sound, Time, Ideas
by Leo Sidran
Melissa Aldana is meeting her moment right now. At 33 years old, she's already a quarter of a century into a musical trip that started in Santiago, Chile. Her father and grandfather were both jazz saxophone players in Chile, and she started early, at six years old, on the alto sax. She and her father would ...
Amir ElSaffar: In search of ecstasy
by Leo Sidran
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 ...
Baby Talk
by H William Stine
Taking baby steps—isn't that what I was doing in my driveway after the last snow storm? Out of the mouths of babes—isn't that why we put bibs on them? Sleep like a baby—I'm sure my audience can relate to that. Throw the baby out with the bath water—doesn't that just mean it's time to get your eyes examined? ...
