The Third Story with Leo Sidran

Siblings Clyde and Gracie Lawrence have been making music together since they were little kids. They say there was never a moment when it switched from something they did for fun to something they did professionally. It has been a long, steady climb for them. Along with the other members of their band, Lawrence, they have been diligently chipping away at a pop music career, growing more popular ev...

Born in Bali, Indonesia, Joey Alexander has been performing professionally since 2013 when he was invited by Wynton Marsalis to perform at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Gala. He was 10 years old.   Alexander subsequently moved to the United States with his family and has been touring and recording ever since. Today he is 20 years old and releasing his seventh solo album Continuance.  Here he talks ab...

Bassist and composer Todd Sickafoose shows up in a lot of places: on stage with singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco or drummer Allison Miller, behind the scenes as a record producer for artists like Noe Venable and Anais Mitchell, orchestrating the music for the Broadway musical Hadestown (which earned him both a Grammy for record production and a Tony for orchestration), and as a bandleader.  His new...

Alan Lightman is a physicist, writer (of novels, essays, memoir and science texts), and social entrepreneur. For this unusual episode, his interview served as inspiration for an original song. Made in collaboration with the Podsongs podcast, this conversation covers his career at the intersection of science and humanities, mortality, success, the cosmos, technology, consciousness, writing fiction,...

Gregory "Hutch" Hutchinson is one of the most highly regarded and highly recorded jazz drummers on the planet. Part of what makes him so special is that he sits at the crossroads of the old school and the new school. He was mentored by old jazz masters like Red Rodney, Ray Brown and Betty Carter. He worked extensively with Joshua Redman and Roy Hargrove, among many other innovative jazz musicians...

John "J.R." Robinson is one of the most recorded drummers in history (some say he is the most recorded drummer) . He is the drummer on 20 number-one pop songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie and Steve Winwood, and has been the drummer on more than 100 Grammy-winning tracks. He was said to be Quincy Jones' favorite recording drummer. Here he talks about growing up...

Writer Jake Lamar talks about growing up in the Bronx, his lifelong love affair with writing, moving to France in the 90s, his career as a novelist, playwright, and cultural critic in Paris, and his new book  Viper's Dream , a Jazz Noir crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961. After graduating from Harvard University, Lamar spent six years writing for Time magazine. He ha...

41 years ago this month, Bruce Springsteen released his sixth studio album,  Nebraska . He recorded much of the album on one winter night, sitting on the edge of the bed in a rented house in New Jersey, playing acoustic guitar and singing, using a 4 track cassette recorder. The album would go on to have lasting influence, inspire other works of art including movies and books, and other records. An...

When Prateek Kuhad moved from India to New York to study economics, there would have been almost no predicting that he would soon become one of the most popular singer songwriters in India.  Prateek grew up in Jaipur listening to Indian pop and Bollywood music, along with a handful of international records that his mother had in the house by artists like Harry Belafonte and Cliff Richards. But it...

For the fifth consecutive year I interview my father on his birthday. This year he's turning 80 and I surprise him with reflections and anecdotes by friends and colleagues from throughout his career, including Jeff Greenfield, Boz Scaggs, Jann Wenner, Michael Cuscuna, Phil Upchurch, Georgie Fame, Gil Goldstein, Janis Siegel, Jorge Drexler and many more! www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdsto...

Singer, pianist and songwriter Laila Biali recently released  Your Requests , built around a collection of songs from the Great American Songbook that were requested by her fans. After a string of projects of her original songs and more contemporary covers, the album was a departure for her. After spending years living in New York, Laila moved back to her native Canada to raise her son, along with...

Conversations on community, artificial intelligence, identity, fan engagement, healthy living, life on the road and more, recorded at the 2023 Montreal International Jazz Festival. Featuring Michael League, Nate Smith, Carlos Homs, Julius Rodriguez, Benny Benack III, Emmet Cohen, Stacey Kent, and more. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

When it comes to instruments that are not easily designed for improvising soloists, there is perhaps none more difficult to handle than the harp. And when it comes to contemporary jazz harpists, there is perhaps none more influential in this moment than Brandee Younger.  From the very beginning, as a young music student growing up on Long Island, Brandee Younger was toeing the line between her cla...

Multi instrumentalist singer-songwriter Theo Katzman (known for his work with the funk band Vulfpeck) bought a van from a teenager in California and drove across the country, settling in the woods of Michigan where he set up a studio, started a label, and got down to the business of writing a new record.  Along the way, he discovered the Wim Hof breathing and ice bathing techniques and came out wi...

For saxophonist Ben Wendel, the pandemic provided the space for him to develop his latest solo record, All One (Edition Records), a project that is both very solitary and very collaborative. It features a woodwind choir of saxophones and bassoons performed entirely by Ben, and then joined by special guests like singers Cecile McLorin Salvant and Jose James, guitarist Bill Frisell, and trumpeter Te...

Beth Nielsen Chapman is a songwriter's songwriter. She began writing before she had any idea that it could be a career; it was just something that came naturally to her. When she first started out, there was no way to possibly imagine just how important songs would become in her journey - both professionally and personally. Here she talks about that journey, which includes writing songs for Martin...

Pianist-composer Vijay Iyer has been described by The New York Times as a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway." He has been praised by Pitchfork as "one of the best in the world at what he does," by the Los Angeles Weekly as "a boundless and deeply important young star," and by Minnesota Public Radio as "an American...

To say Christian McBride is prolific is both obvious and an understatement. The list of his projects is too long to fit neatly into any one container - he's a musician, an educator, a composer, an artistic director, and a broadcaster. He's an ambassador, a personality, an icon. And of course, he is a bass player.  One gets the sense that his days are simply fuller than most people's days. He alway...

Accepting her Grammy award for Best New Artist last month, Samara Joy looked out at a sea of faces that she had grown up admiring and said, "I've been watching y'all on TV for so long…I'm born and raised in the Bronx."  It was almost as though she was reminding herself of just how far she had come, and just how quickly. That was a big moment for the 23 year old singer who was just a year and a hal...

This week on the Third Story Podcast I'm turning the tables on myself and sharing the stories and the creative process behind my new record What's Trending. Featuring excerpts of past episodes with artists who collaborated on the record and inspired the songs, including Boz Scaggs, Louis Cato, Janis Siegel, Michael Leonhart, Peter Coyote and more. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodc...

While almost everyone is sharing the most polished and curated versions of themselves, Braxton Cook is asking "Who Are You When No One Is Watching?" Actually, as it turns out, it's a question he's asking of himself, and in a somewhat postmodern and ironic twist, he's doing it quite publicly on his new record, called (surprise!) Who Are You When No One Is Watching? which comes out February 24 on Ne...

Music is not only a form of expression, it's also a way of traveling. It's astounding how many people's lives have been completely transformed by their relationship with music - and sometimes the simplest experiences we have as kids can profoundly alter the course of everything that follows.  A few seemingly unrelated events during Andy Narell's early childhood in New York helped to lay out a path...

Will Page was working for the UK Government Economic Service in the income tax division, and moonlighting as a music writer for Straight No Chaser magazine when his life changed almost overnight. Pretty soon he was living in London, and helping to shape the new music business and the economics of music streaming.   Page eventually went on to work at Spotify where he was the chief economist. Will's...

Rachael & Vilray are a perfect example of the idea that sometimes what that once seemed old fashioned can actually resonate as new again. Their new record I Love A Love Song! comes out this week.  Rachael Price is best known as the singer in the band Lake Street Dive. She and Vilray met at college two decades ago. But it would take them years before they discovered their mutual love of the America...

A collection of Art of the Story pieces for WBGO News by Leo Sidran / The Third Story Podcast from 2022, including coverage of the Montreal and Umbria jazz festivals (featuring Dave King, Julian Lage, Samara Joy, Matt Pierson, Terence Higgins, Gregory Porter, Kurt Elling, Dave Koz and more) as well as short profiles on Lau Noah, Michael Thurber, Tomasz Stanko, Tyshawn Sorey, Jesse Harris, Jorge Dr...