Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman

Elizabeth Pallett is a wonderful British lute player.  Her love of Renaissance music and history is infectious and she has generously provided this episode with several of her beautifully produced YouTube videos; her channel Luteweb is linked below, as well as her duo Amarylli with soprano Hannah Grove. We talk about the history of the evolution of plucked instruments in Europe, and many fascinati...

Netflix’s hit series "Dead to Me" (which I love), the Academy Award nominated short My Year of Dicks, and many other projects including You’re the Worst and Brockmire. In this wide-ranging conversation punctuated by music used with permission, we talked about many things including Adam’s many musical influences growing up in New York City, his work for the Fred Rogers Institute and his reflections...

Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto is a California-based Koto performer and teacher, and she also created “Hidden Legacy”, the story of the Japanese Traditional Performing Arts in the American WWII Internment Camps. In this episode she performs some incredibly beautiful koto music, and there are wonderful stories with each piece. Like all my episodes, this is available as both video and podcast, and for thos...

Martin Hayes is an internationally renowned Irish fiddler beloved for his expressive playing and his collaborations with many great musicians in different genres including Bill Frisell, Sting, Paul Simon and more recently Yo Yo Ma with the Silk Road Project. During this episode we spoke of his wonderful book Shared Notes, and he plays some beautiful music live (you can always use the timestamps if...

My guest today is Immanuel Abraham,  a very special musican, who is an inspiring violinist, educator and composer.  His phenomenal talent, discipline and creativity  is even more inspiring since he didn’t have an opportunity to learn a musical instrument until the age of 14 and  4 years later, he was auditioning for the renowned University of Michigan in violin performance, playing the same Pagani...

I’m so honoured that Madeline Bruser has agreed to be featured as a guest on this series. When I first read her book The Art of Practicing more than 20 years ago, it helped to transform my experience as a performer and teacher, and on many aspects of my life. Although Madeline’s teaching is aimed primarily at classical pianists and other musicians, I find that much of what she talks about will res...

Pat Irwin is a renowned film and television composer; some of his scores include Dexter: New Blood, Rocko’s Modern Life, Pepper Ann, and Nurse Jackie. He’s also a multi-instrumentalist who was a member of the B52s for 18 years; he founded The Raybeats and 8 Eyed Spy, and more recently the band SUSS of which I’m a fan. Pat also teaches film composition at NYU, and Brooklyn College at the Feirstein...

Colin Aguiar is an award-winning Indian-Candian composer based in Los Angeles who specializes in film scoring. In this conversation we talked about his youth, growing up across parts of India, the Middle East, Europe and Canada and studying the music of various cultures, learning different instruments with a start on drums as a toddler, as well as his love for the music of Arvo Pärt and other grea...

Philip Griffin is an amazingly versatile, creative, and generous musician. He plays, improvises, and composes in many styles on many different instruments.  During this episode you’ll hear him play the rebab, the ukulele, and guitar in his duo with violinist Jude Iddison. He reflects on his work teaching children and people with disabilities, and reflects on some of his important mentors including...

I’m delighted to feature the master bansuri player Milind Date, who joined me from his home in Pune, India, and played his flutes as well as shared his perspectives from his life in music. As always, check the timestamps below for both the music and the many topics we covered. Milind spoke to me about his studies with the legendary Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, of his fusion projects especially in...

I was so honoured to have this opportunity to talk with the inspiring Destiny Muhammad, who is a California-based jazz harpist and composer. You’ll get to hear inspiring stories from her life as well as her music. She had a dream to play the harp but didn’t have the opportunity until she was 30 years old. She speaks openly about the challenges in the 1980s due to the crack cocaine trade, her succe...

Matt Zimbel is a percussionist with the band Manteca, and also an award-winning writer, producer, documentary filmmaker, artistic director, broadcast executive and radio and tv host. In this fascinating episode he shares his insights gained from a wealth of experience across the music industry. We speak near the beginning about his father the photographer George Zimbel, who died this past January...

My guest today is the phenomenal jazz violinist, mandolinist, arranger, and writer Aaron Weinstein. Aaron is a self-taught violinist and attended the renowned Berklee College on a 4 year talent based scholarship. As a young man he performed and recorded with many jazz legends. In this episode we talked about some of these mentors, including Bucky and John Pizzarelli, Les Paul, and this interview i...

Welcome to a special Catch-Up bonus episode with violinist Gina Burgess. My original episode with her is linked here, as well as the podcast versions of both, with transcripts: https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/e18-s1-gina-burgess-multi-style-violinist  If you missed my first conversation with Gina, you’ll be interested to hear her fascinating personal story and how she became so connected with...

Gertrude Létourneau, known to some as Trudy, is a flutist, pianist, singer and a therapeutic musician. During this episode, she tells many moving stories of the residents she has worked with in her many years working at Pearly Health. During the episode she frequently breaks into song and plays a variety of flutes as well as paints a vivid picture of the fulfilling role she plays working with vete...

Adam Hurt is an acclaimed clawhammer banjo player and one of my favourite performers in any style and I was absolutely delighted that he agreed not only to speak to me at length about his life and teaching of traditional music, but also perform for this episode some of my favourite music. His albums of gourd banjo music “Earth Tones” and “Back to the Earth” are beloved by a wide range of listeners...

Ineke Vando orn is a wonderfully expressive prizewinning jazz vocalist, author, composer and educator. We talked about overcoming voice problems, the craft of writing lyrics, teaching vocal improvisation, her book “Singing from the Inside Out”, and many of her fascinating creative collaborations. During the recording of this episode Ineke performed 3 times, and also check out the timestamps below...

Ali Omar El-Farouk is an Egyptian and Canadian oud guitar player, composer and teacher. Ali plays his oud and three other instruments during this fascinating conversation in which we talked about learning from a place of joy, connecting across cultures through music, languages, architecture, Istanbul, Spain, Umm Kulthum, Nubian music, jazz, and lots more. The link for the video version and transcr...

Multi-instrumentalist Colleen Allen is a versatile and expressive performer based in Toronto, Canada. In this conversation, we talked about her perspectives on evaluating priorities, rising to new challenges, collaboration, teaching improvisation, and the physical challenges of playing so many different instruments. Colleen’s candid warmth and love of music really shine through in this wide-rangin...

I was honoured to speak with the inspiring singer, composer, choir leader, pianist and cultural activist Polina Shepherd. In this episode you’ll hear Polina’s stories from growing up in Tartarstan, in the former Soviet Union, finding a bridge to her Jewish identity through Klezmer music, collaborating with her mentors, founding Yiddish and Russian choirs in the U.K., and many other creative projec...

This is a special bonus Catch-Up episode with singer-songwriter Megan Jerome. Today is also the release of my conversation with her husband, the jazz drummer Mike Essoudry. In this short episode, you’ll hear how Megan fell in love with Mike, as well as about the creation of her new album “Love” with the Together Ensemble including two songs from the album, “Hot Pink Heart”, and “Isn’t Life Grand”....

This episode features the fantastic drummer Mike Essoudry, who is a busy performer and composer in Ottawa, Canada,  playing with many projects in the funk, jazz, and improvised music scene. He’s in the  funk group Gephilte with a previous guest of this series,  Josh “Socalled” Dolgin, and in the Together Ensemble with his partner Megan Jerome. Today also marks the release of my bonus catch-up epis...

Renée Yoxon is a trans non-binary singer, songwriter, jazz musician, and trans voice teacher. In this episode, Renee shares some beautiful and inspiring performances from their albums, as well as stories from life as a disabled person and how their disability and chronic pain has guided the direction of their career. We talk about their musical development, and their experiences both bad and good...

Leslie DeShazor is a multi-style violist,  violinist and composer based in Detroit. She teaches students both through the Sphinx Organization and the Detroit Symphony as well as privately. She was named one of thirty Professional Movers and Shakers in the Performing Arts by Musical America in 2019 and in 2022 she released her jazz and R&B album “Journey With Me” which features herself as soloist,...

The internationally renowned guitarist Derek Gripper  is famous for his groundbreaking technique for evoking the West African kora on the guitar. During this episode you’ll get to hear Derek play quite a bit and you will hear his wonderful insights on how we listen to and learn music, the influence of  Montessori and Alexander Technique in his life, his reflections on important collaborations in h...