Music Life and Times

Jamie Hood is the owner-operator of the digital marketing agency, Jamie Hood Creative/Marketing, but also a lifelong musician. That experience and his passion to “give back” come together in a charitable initiative he calls the Fare Thee Well Foundation. For more than 20 years, Jamie and the Foundation have been staging music-oriented events, the entire proceeds from which go to provide music camp...

Sonny Rollins passed away on May 25 at the of 95. The legendary saxophonist of the bebop era and beyond was famously unhappy with his performances. But the occasional bad night was worth the trade-off to Rollins. His refusal to play the same passages the same way from night to night, those risks he took regularly might go badly at times, but they were also responsible for his greatest moments. The...

Will Scruggs is a noted jazz saxophonist with a head for business and a major commitment to the sustainability of jazz in the city of Atlanta. That has led Will on a three-year journey to establish a new home for jazz in Atlanta. Named after Sam Yi's historic Churchill Grounds and historic jazz figure Mary Lou Williams, Churchill Grounds at the Mary Lou Williams Jazz Center will include a club wit...

2026 Super Bowl winning quarterback Sam Darnold was once considered a “draft bust.” Interviewed after his Super Bowl win over the New England Patriots, Darnold told reporters, “As long as you believe in yourself, anything is possible.” Music is analogous to sports in many ways: performers can't hide; it's live; it takes years of hard work to become accomplished and failure along the way is inevita...

Guitarist Buddy Red describes his music as “psychedelic.” The son of Atlanta rapper T.I., a pioneer of trap music, the 26-year-old Red has adopted a style more closely associated with rock 'n roll and the blues. A regular at Northside Tavern in Atlanta, Buddy was chosen the opening act of the 2026 Atlanta Jazz Festival. 

It's not an uncommon story: Musicians take another course in life to ensure a steady enough career to support themselves and their families. But sometimes, they have the courage and a passion for playing music to eventually leave corporate life and return to music as their full-time pursuit. The bottom-line reason: Nothing compares to the feeling of playing music well and seeing the enjoyment in t...

Steve Williams is a multifaceted musician: composer, arranger, saxophonist. His depth of expertise and versatility has led him over his more than 50 years of playing and performing into a wide range of musical arenas, from the famed One O'Clock Band of his North Texas University days, to the U.S. Navy Commodores, where he played lead alto, was musical director, and contributed some 70 compositions...

In 2005, Mica Bethea, a 21-year-old jazz student at the University of North Florida, was driving back to campus when he was rear-ended by a tractor-trailer in stand-still traffic. The accident left him quadriplegic, with close to 90 percent of his body paralyzed. Doctors told him he would never again play his instruments, saxophone and piano. But he refused to let the accident keep him from music....

An entrepreneur is defined as someone who starts or owns a business and is willing to take on the related risks. As a musician, your business is your career, and while you might not have employees or an office to keep afloat, you are a service provider running your own business. In a Harvard Business School Online article, “10 Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs,” ( https://online.hbs.edu/...

Howard Paul is well known and respected as a highly accomplished jazz guitarist. But he is also a pillar of the Savannah, Georgia music community. He has served as Savannah Jazz Festival chair and president of the board of directors of the Savannah Jazz/Coastal Jazz Association for a combined twelve years. He was inducted into the Savannah Coastal Jazz Hall of Fame in 2011. Howard continues as a m...

Reverend Timothy J. Mercaldo is a professional musician and, for more than 35 years, an evangelical minister who uses music as his primary way to connect with people. With music and worship as centerpieces of his life, Tim founded WorshipPlus to equip local churches and Christian organizations to think creatively, that is, to use the creative arts to enhance their worship experiences and outreach...

Howard R. Paul is one of those rare individuals with the talent and energy to successfully navigate a dual career as business person and jazz musician. Paul has established himself as both as an internationally acclaimed guitarist, whose CDs include “Tony Monaco/Howard Paul: New Adventures,” “Bob James & Howard Paul: Just Friends: The Hamilton Hall Session,” and “Ali Ryerson: Jammin’ At The Ja...

Through 20-something years of his post-graduate professional music career, Bassist Chris Riggenbach has compiled an impressive resume based on his versatility. Playing cello as a youngster, he graduated to electric bass in high school, then in college took on upright bass in order to play with jazz combos. His versatility has found him in everything from orchestras for musicals to jazz trios touri...

Saxophonist Matt Miller was influenced by the playing of legendary saxophonist Hank Mobley early in his musical life and has remained so throughout his own career. Mobley’s influence has extended beyond Miller’s playing to a passion to learn more about this beloved player about whom comparatively little has been written or is known. History seemingly has forgotten the man, a contemporary of John C...

It was around 1960 when Steve Lacy, a saxophonist in Thelonious Monk’s band at the time, wrote down a series of items, pieces of advice that Monk had conveyed to him while touring in 1960 and 1961. Long before there was an internet, Lacy’s handwritten list went viral. In Episode 67, we covered the first 11 items on the list. In this episode we discuss the meaning or implications of the remaining i...

It was around 1960 when Steve Lacy, a saxophonist in Thelonious Monk’s band at the time, wrote down a series of items, pieces of advice that Thelonious Monk had conveyed to him while touring in 1960 and 1961. Long before there was an internet, Lacy’s handwritten list went viral. And while it provides insights into Monk’s philosophies about performing, many of those pieces of advice can metaphorica...

David Michael Bashwiner is a composer, a guitarist, a professor at the University of New Mexico, and at the root of it all, a neuroscientist. He speaks nationally on the subject of music and the brain, and in particular on how music is used to establish meaning and emotion, for example, by the movies as the means to having scenes interpreted as they are intended. David talks about how his neurosci...

Ronnie Frugé learned t play guitar as a 10-year-old on a Sears Silvertone acoustic in a town called Iowa (pronounced I-o-way) outside the city of Lake Charles in Southwest Louisiana where, now in his 70s, he has returned to live and perform. His first influences were Cajun songs; his first band featured him on guitar and a friend on accordion. From South Louisiana his music took him to Austin, Tex...

On Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025, surgeons at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida drilled 14 holes in jazz pianist Mark Burnell’s skull and inserted 200 electrodes in an attempt to halt his increasingly frequent seizures resulting from a brain injury that had been festering since a childhood accident. In the newly developed treatment protocol designed to remove damaged areas of the brain, Bur...

Typically people who want to play music want to play the kind of music they like most. And learning to play involves studying and absorbing how the musicians we admire most play. But maturing as a performer means finding your own voice; that is, beyond imitating, learning to express your music in your own unique way.

Responsibility is one of the life lessons that learning to play music and performing music teach you. Not only do you have to show up, you have to be “on,” that is, playing your best every time you take the stage, no matter how you feel or what your day was like. You owe it to your audience, to other members in the band you’re playing with that night, and to yourself.

Consistent with our recurring theme of how music has a positive impact on our lives, we talk about how music teaches those who learn to play to express themselves better, not just through music but in other ways, including in their careers outside music and their social interactions.

A composer, conductor, and journalist, and the founder, publisher, and principal writer of EarRelevant.net, Mark Gresham has been writing about classical and post-classical music and other arts for more than 35 years. He co-founded the monthly publication Chorus! in 1989 and edited it through 1995. Thirteen of his interviews from the magazine were published in 1997 as the book, Choral Conversation...

Lisa Campbell Albert sings and teaches others to do the same. For more than 30 years she has been singing and playing keyboard, leading her and her husband’s blues band, Uncle Albert, performing in and around St. Louis as well as nationally and internationally, including regular annual appearances in Germany. She has also channeled her knowledge from her academic studies as well as her professiona...

Mark Rapp’s resume as a performing artist is impressive enough. He has performed in jazz clubs and festivals around the world from Croatia, Brasil, Austria, Switzerland, and the US, including back-to-back appearances at the 2017 and 2018 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. His celebrated 2009 debut release “Token Tales” earned him DownBeat magazine’s recognition as a “Top Emerging Trumpeter,”...