Follow Your Dream - Music And Much More!

David Rivard is a renowned poet with seven books of poetry to his credit. His newest is called “Some of You Will Know”. His other books incude “Standoff”, “Otherwise Elsewhere”, “Sugartown”, “Bewitched Playground”, “Wise Poison”, and “Torque”. His work has won the PEN/New England Prize in poetry, the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and he has been a finalist for the Los An...

Chloe Dufresne is the newly appointed conductor and Musical Director of the Colorado Springs Philharmonic. She also serves as Associate Artist of two other orchestras. She has conducted operas including Carmen and Don Giovanni, for Opéra Rouen, Opéra de Toulon, Opéra de Nice and Opéra National de Lorraine, as well as a production of Wagner’s The Ring for children at the Helsinki Festival.   My fea...

Mark Hammond is a drummer and a programmer who made his mark in Nashville recording artists like Amy Grant, Whitney Houston, James Ingram, Michael Bolton, Peabo Bryson, Vanessa Williams, Faith Hill, Trisha Yearwood, Wynonna Judd, Martina McBride and Quincy Jones. He also produced many top Christian artists, and he then began creating and producing music for Disney while also producing artists such...

Hilary Gardner is a wonderful jazz singer raised in Wasilla, Alaska, but she’s says she’s a New Yorker at heart. She’s a 5x Downbeat Magazine Rising Star Female Vocalist. And she’s released four recordings as a leader, one of which, On The Trail, captures the “singing cowboy” era of the 1930s-40s. The album was named Western Album of the Year by the International Western Music Association. She is...

This is another Follow Your Dream Reflection — observations drawn from my many conversations with remarkable creative artists. After speaking with hundreds of artists from around the world, one idea keeps coming back to me: the best artists are adventurous. They’re explorers. They are always searching for something new. Sometimes it’s a new sound. Sometimes it’s a new technique. Sometimes it’s sim...

Jen Ash is a Lebanese-French pop star. With a really interesting back story. She was born in Lebanon and raised in France. And listen to this - She was a professional basketball player for 14 years, and then she ditched that career for a career in music. She calls her music Afro fusion, mixing R&B, French Caribbean and Afro rhythms, together with her Lebanese roots. And she says she wants to be pa...

Charu Suri is a Grammy nominated pianist and composer. She fuses Indian ragas with traditional jazz. Her latest album, Shayan, blends evening ragas with classical and jazz, encouraging people to sleep better and healthier. She had a sold-out premiere for this release at Carnegie Hall last year. Her prior album featured John Patitucci and Steve Gadd. Her albums have reached #1 in India and #2 in Ke...

Philippe Quint is a multiple Grammy nominated violinist. He’s an advocate for contemporary music. Conductors he’s worked with include Andrew Litton and JoAnn Falletta, both of whom have been guests on this podcast. His programs include an Homage to Bach, Charlie Chaplin’s Smile, and The Legend of Astor Piazzolla. He’s performed with the London Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Ph...

Jim Kimo West is a multiple Grammy winning Hawaiian “slack key” guitarist, producer and composer with kind of a New Age bent. He went to Hawaii in 1985 and basically never left. Except to go on tour with Weird Al Yankovic, with whom he’s played for over 30 years and earned 5 Grammys and a Billboard #1 album. He’s also composed music for TV and films. My featured song is “The Pardners”, from the al...

This episode introduces a new addition to the Follow Your Dream platform. It’s called Essays. Over the years, I’ve had more than 750 in-depth conversations with creative artists from around the world. Those conversations have taught me a great deal about creativity, success, curiosity, purpose, and the creative journey. To explore some of those ideas more deeply, I’ve launched Essays. It’s Follow...

Lola Kristine is a terrific singer and songwriter. She’s known as “the little girl with the big voice” and boy is that true, as you will hear. She combines jazz, blues and gospel. Her latest album is called “Chapters”. Her recording of 'We Are One' was featured on lran TV Network as part of the Woman Life Freedom movement. And she’s given me a couple of new songs for the Songfest portion. My featu...

Alessio Bax is a remarkable Italian born classical pianist - a recitalist, a chamber musician, and a soloist. He’s appeared with nearly 200 orchestras, including the New York, London, Royal, and St. Petersburg Philharmonics. He has collaborated with Joshua Bell and his wife, Lucille Chung, another world-class concert pianist, among many others. He’s the founding Artistic Director of the London Fes...

Christina Courtin is an outstanding Violinist, vocalist, and composer and a founding member of The Knights, the classical orchestra founded by Eric Jacobsen and his brother. She has collaborated with Ed Sheeran, Le Ann Womack, and Sara Bareilles, among many others. She has toured all over the world, and continues to have a thriving solo career. She has sung with artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Up...

Carly Paoli is a spectacular British classically trained soprano singer and a Classical Brit nominee. She’s known for her romantic, lyric driven performances across various musical genres including classical, contemporary, operetta and popular songs. She’s headlined at Carnegie Hall, St Peter’s Basilica, Windsor Castle, St James’ Palace and the London Palladium among many others. She's performed w...

After more than 750 episodes, I’ve observed that many of my remarkable guests are connected by one or more common threads. Each episode of Special Collections focuses on a particular thread that ties together some of my guests. In this episode, that common thread is the British Invasion era of the 1960s. The era began, in essence, with the appearance of The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show on Febru...

Keita Ogawa is a 5x Grammy nominee and 3x Grammy winning percussionist and drummer. He’s performed with Yo-Yo Ma, Maria Schneider, Betty Buckley, Sabeth Perez and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. And he’s a member of Snarky Puppy. He’s got a passion for crossing musical borders and uniting differences in cultures.  My featured song is “Moon Shot”, my recent single. Spotify link . —------------------...

Nathan Schram is a 2x Grammy winning composer and the violist of the Attacca Quartet. He has collaborated with Sting, Björk, Billie Eilish, David Crosby, and Becca Stevens, among others. He is an Honorary Ambassador to the city of Chuncheon, South Korea. He’s released three solo records and several with Attacca, two of which won Grammys for Best Chamber Music Performance. His arrangement of a Radi...

John “JR” Robinson is one of the best and maybe the most recorded drummer of the modern era. His Bio is out of this world. You definitely know his playing, because he’s played on just about every song ever recorded. Here’s just a couple. He’s the guy who played that legendary drum fill in Michael Jackson's "Rock With You" from “Off The Wall”, the spectacular intro to Steve Winwood's No. 1 hit, "Hi...

Jen Shyu is a groundbreaking multilingual vocalist, composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and dancer. And if that wasn’t enough she is also a Rome Prize Winner, a Guggenheim Fellow, a United States Artists Fellow, a Doris Duke Artist, and she was voted a Downbeat Critics Poll Rising Star Female Vocalist. Her background is Taiwanese and East Timorese, and she speaks 11 languages. She’s perform...

After five years and more than 750 episodes, I had a revelation that Follow Your Dream had become much more than just a podcast - it is a global arts platform. It's founded upon 5 pillars of content: Conversations with more than 750 guests; Special Collections, where I curate episodes around common themes and ideas; Reflections, where I share my own observations and thoughts inspired by hundreds o...

John Riesen is an award winning tenor singer. His genres include opera, musical theatre, oratorio, studio recording, and concerts. He’s released 2 albums and over 130 commercial recordings. He is also an associate producer on the Grammy nominated project The Impossible Dream. He was on America's Got Talent as part of the group Metaphysic. He’s performed at venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln C...

Ted Rosenthal is the real deal. He’s a Grammy nominated jazz pianist and composer and one of the leading lights in this genre. He has performed worldwide as a soloist, with his trio, and with many jazz greats including Gerry Mulligan, Wynton Marsalis, Jon Faddis, Art Farmer, Phil Woods, and James Moody.  All are jazz icons. He’s a Winner of the Thelonious Monk International Competition. He’s relea...

Jennifer Barnhart is an actor, singer, voiceover artist - and a puppeteer! Her career is filled with her extraordinary work on children’s programming. She was an original cast member of the Tony Award-winning musical, "Avenue Q.”  She is also an Emmy-nominated performer for her work  on "Sesame Street," where she plays Zoe and Granny Bird, among others. She was Cleo on the PBS show, “Between the L...

Nino Surguladze is an acclaimed operatic mezzo-soprano. She is from Tbilisi, Georgia. She made her debut at age 23 at La Scala and has performed at many of the world’s most prestigious opera houses including Teatro di San Carlo; Teatro Real Madrid; Metropolitan Opera in New York; and the Mariinsky Theatre, San Diego Opera, New Zealand Opera and across Italy where she starred in Carmen. Her career...

Alex Frank is the Musical Director and bassist for actor and musician Jeff Goldblum’s jazz group, The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra. He co-produced the group’s latest album, which includes Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, and Scarlett Johansson. He’s also worked on previous albums with Kelly Clarkson, Fiona Apple and Miley Cyrus. He played the bass in the film Jersey Boys, directed by Clint Eastwood, and...