The Jazz Interview Podcast

In this far-ranging interview, Aaron Parks talks being a “little smarty pants” who went to college at 14, dropping four albums as a piano wunderkind teen, getting tutored by Kenny Barron at the Manhattan School of Music, mentored on the road by Terence Blanchard, being signed by Blue Note Records, and releasing modern classic Invisible Cities (2008) – all by the age of 25 … He also inspirationally...

Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Oprah Winfrey, Prince, Buzz Aldrin, Nelson Mandela, Robert De Niro, Count Basie, Frank Gehry, David Bowie, Will Smith, Paul McCartney, Herbie Hancock, Lesley Gore, Mick Jagger, Duke Ellington, Martin Scorsese and, of course, Michael Jackson… These are just a few of the names that came up in the 45 minutes I spent with Q, one magical afternoon. To celebrate a life lived...

To celebrate the 85th birthday of Gary Bartz, we're sharing this freewheeling wide-ranging, previously unpublished interview for the first time. Hear the legend recount his career in his own words: from early sessions with Art Blakey to his charged Ntu Troupe records, working with McCoy Tyner and Donald Byrd, and of course, his years on the road with Miles Davis, immortalised on the sprawling...

To celebrate the life of Sérgio Mendes – one year after his death aged 83, on September 5, 2024, from complications associated with long Covid – I’m sharing this archive interview with the world’s greatest populariser of Brazilian music. Every time you hear a bad bossa nova cover of a rock song in a hotel lobby, you probably have this guy to blame. Because while Antônio Carlos Jobim gave Brazilian...

In the wake of winning more Downbeat awards than even the magazine can count*, we called Mary Halvorson at home in Brooklyn, at 8pm on a Saturday night, to discuss the new artistic heights reached on About Ghosts – her fourth fantastic Nonesuch Records release utilising the peerless Amaryllis sextet. We traced her formative experiences, from falling under the tutelage of Anthony Braxton, to her ea...

To celebrate the 65th birthday of the first Black African women to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, we asked Angélique Kidjo to talk through the five of her most influential and life-changing recordings, starting with 1981 debut Pretty in Paris , recorded aged 20 with legendary Cameroonian artist Ekambi Brillant at the helm. A decade later she hit the mainstream with the commercial br...

As Antonio Sánchez releases an incredible new album with the BEATrio supergroup – alongside American banjo legend Bela Fleck and Colombian harp maestro Edmar Castañeda – the Mexican drumming powerhouse looks back on his incredible jazz journey. It’s a story of serendipity. Sánchez discovered jazz when Alejandro González Iñárritu played a Pat Metheny tune on his Mexican radio show; when the film di...

Makaya McCraven is one of the most innovative improvising musicians to come to prominence amid “jazz” music’s unlikely resurgence of the past decade. His breakout International Anthem albums In The Moment and Universal Beings were nothing short of a revelation. Based on completely improvised recordings of his own bands, but sliced up and remixed by McCraven after the event, his methodology flipped...

To mark the 85th birthday of the most famous improvising musician on the platform, Herbie Hancock looks back over his life and career at length – from his first encounters with Miles Davis in the 60s, to 70s crossover success with “Chameleon” and the surprise 80s hit “Rockit”, to his battle with crack addiction in the 90s. Hancock also opens up about the long-gestating new album – reported to feat...

As Takuya Kuroda drops another banging funk-forward LP, Everyday – on PPK Records, a new label venture from bass legend Pino Palladino – we called the Japanese, NYC-based trumpeter to talk through his career: from formative big band experiences growing up in Kobe, to meeting mentor José James at NYC’s New School, scoring a smash hit with the prophetic neo-soul-influenced Blue Note Records debut Ri...

Ezra Collective just won a freaking Brit Award for Best British Group! Talking to drummer and leader Femi Koleoso, we trace the history of band, from its inception as competition-winning teens in 2012, to coming up in the fabled “UK jazz explosion” of 2016-18 alongside contemporaries and friends Moses Boyd, Kokoroko and Nubya Garcia We also talked at length about how helpful or unhelpful that medi...

To mark the 85th birthday of Ralph Towner, we share a recent interview with the legendary guitar virtuoso and pianist. From his home in Rome, Towner talks us through his 50-plus-year recording career with ECM Records – from classic album Solstice, recorded with Jan Gabarek – to recent solo release At First Light. Ralph also shares his writing and improvisation process, and recounts memorable encou...