The Third Story with Leo Sidran

When ALA.NI was growing up in West London, she wanted to be a ballerina. Eventually she realized that there were almost no black ballerinas and the message that was sent to her quietly but consistently was that there would be no easy place for her in the world of ballet. She started to sing. She loved musicals, especially The Sound Of Music , & Grease . Again and again, she was told that she didn'...

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Camila Meza on growing up in Chile, the nature of translation, improvisation, self observation, bootleg videotapes, identity, cruise ship living, synesthesia and distortion. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.camilameza.com

The world is full of talented people you've never heard of, and it's quite possible that Ryan Scott is one of them. Around New York, if you know about Ryan Scott, then you know. "Ryan Scott?" Enough said. Funky? Oh yes. Soulful? Unquestionably. Prepared to surrender himself totally to the music and the moment at all times? Affirmative.  But if you don't know, it can be difficult to catch up. Ryan...

When Adam Sandler first sang his "Hannukah Song" on SNL in 1994, even he was surprised by the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response it received. He was singing something we all understood even if we didn't know the details: The Jewish contribution to American comedy and entertainment is significant, undeniable, indelible. And the American contribution to global popular culture in the last century i...

Peter Himmelman had momentum. Before he had a decades long career, videos on MTV (back when there were videos on MTV), Grammy and Emmy nominations, Parents Choice Awards, critical acclaim, a family, TV and movie scores… before any of that, he had momentum. Peter came out swinging, with something prove and something to offer. He was motivated in part by what he describes here as a "reigning sense o...

Richard J. Davidson had an intuition early on that the mind was fundamental to human experience. As a child of the 60s he believed early on that "if we wanted to promote a different way of seeing the world, we needed to change our minds." At the same time that he began to dabble in meditation and mind training, he also became a serious student and began a path that ultimately became his life's wor...

Chris Potter is an incredibly influential saxophone player. Downbeat Magazine has called him "one of the most studied (and copied) saxophonists on the planet". In this introspective and philosophical conversation he talks about art, the search for something new, what motivates him today, what he sees as his role, responsibility and contribution to the history of jazz. www.third-story.com www.patre...

David Maraniss has a motto: go there. What he means is that when he's researching one of his books, whether it's a biography of a person or the history of a place and time, he believes that in order to fully understand the story, he has to go to the physical location. Not, like, just for a weekend. He really goes there. He moves in.  But there's another meaning behind the phrase "go there ". He mo...

Musician, singer, writer, producer, philosopher... Ben Sidran is a hard person to define. He belongs in multiple categories, or none at all. He says that his main focus throughout a career that began 50 years ago has been to document what he saw, felt, and heard, by way of various "idioms" (including performances, interviews, essays, recordings, etc.). That's why he sees himself primarily as a jou...

No matter what Richard Julian is doing, he "just wants it to be awesome". As a songwriter, he says he was arrogant before he probably deserved to be, and in fact that it "took years to get beaten into the submission of humility." That may be so, but along the way he wrote some pretty fantastic songs. His album Slow New York (2006) helped to put him on the map and place him squarely in the center o...

Just when you think you know all there is to know about Donald Fagen, he surprises you. There are legendary stories, traded like playing cards in chat rooms, fanzines, and merch lines. Along with his musical partner, the late Walter Becker (who passed away in 2017), Fagen has influenced countless musicians, producers and songwriters by setting the gold standard in record production and arrangement...

As a younger man Joey Dosik thought he might make a contribution on the saxophone. He loved playing basketball and playing piano too, and he had a sweet, soulful singing voice. But if you asked him he probably would have told you that he was going to be a jazz sax player. That's what took him out of LA and to the University of Michigan.  Sometimes the stars align and the right people show up in th...

Singer, songwriter and pianist Ben Thornewill started his band, Jukebox The Ghost, with two friends in 2003 when he was in college at George Washington University. "From day one we were just kind of making it up," he says. He adds "It's the same three members from the very beginning and everything is a series of great compromises." Not that there's anything wrong with that. He says, "It tends out...

When the 73 year old performer Andre De Shields accepted his Tony award last night for his role as Hermes in the hit Broadway show Hadestown, he began with these words: "Baltimore, Maryland are you in the house? I hope you're watching at home because I am making good on my promise that I would come to New York and become someone you'd be proud to call your native son." In this conversation, record...

Eli Reed took a trip. It started in a Boston suburb with a cheap suit and a paperboy cap. He took his suit, cap and guitar to Clarksdale, Mississippi. He stayed there just long enough to become a local musician. They called him "Paperboy" because of the cap. Then he headed up to Chicago and pretended to study sociology at the University of Chicago. While he was pretending to study, what he was rea...

If Melissa Clark is in your life already, then she needs little introduction. Maybe you have one of the 40+ cookbooks that she has authored. Maybe you've made one of the recipes from her New York Times column "A Good Appetite", watched one of her cooking videos online, seen her on the Today Show , as a guest judge on Iron Chef America , or heard her as a guest host on The Splendid Table radio show...

Anya Marina was the hottest DJ on the hottest radio station in San Diego. She had a natural, direct and conversational way of talking on the mic that made her a perfect fit for FM radio, she was a witty improviser, and she was fearless in the face of celebrity. Plus from an early age, she loved comedy and had even considered a career in comedic acting. She could see her life laid out ahead of her....

Sophie Auster grew up in a house of writers (her father is Paul Auster, and her mother is Siri Hustvedt, both acclaimed authors). For Sophie, the creative process always "was quite normal". As she saw it, "artists are everywhere."  So it was somewhat inevitable that she began a creative career when she was a child, first as an actress, then as a singer and songwriter. Her latest record, Next Time...

Kassa Overall will tell you, "I love being the first thing of a thing. It's one of my favorite things." Kassa will also tell you that grew up in the cut . Between two kinds of music. Between two neighborhoods, in Seattle, that were "actually divided and separated". He related more to the black neighborhood that he lived in, but he went to school mostly with white kids. "Looking back on it now I re...

Guitarist Cory Wong wants you to know that "smooth-jazz" is not a dirty word. At least not as he sees it. That's why he started referring to himself as the "millennial smooth jazz ambassador". Cory comes from Minneapolis and got his start working with many of the great Minneapolis funk musicians who worked with Prince; they showed him the ways of the funk . It's a deep and very special legacy. Cor...

Jacques Schwarz-Bart says that he never fit neatly into any one category. He says, "I knew early on in my life that I could not go down a regular path. It would be hard for other human beings to totally accept me the way I am."  From the very start, Jacques' life was unusual. Born in the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to a pair of writers (his mother the  Guadeloupean  novelist  Simone Schwarz-Bar...

How does pianist Aaron Parks describe himself? "A bit odd. I play piano, write songs, and take pictures of doors with my phone." Raised on a small island near Seattle, Washington, Aaron found himself hungry for more creative and intellectual stimulation than his immediate surroundings could offer. He enrolled in college at the age of 14, studying music, math and computer science. It wasn't long be...

Kenny Werner might try to talk you out of becoming a jazz musician. "Please don't become a jazz musician just because you think you should. That's like saying you think you should become a typewriter salesman. Nobody needs you. I would do everything I could to talk them out of it and if they couldn't be talked out of it then I would say go for it. It's got to be a thing of extreme love because it...

Pianist, composer, educator and recording artist Fred Hersch has been proclaimed "the most arrestingly innovative pianist in jazz over the last decade" by Vanity Fair, "an elegant force of musical invention" by The L.A. Times, and "a living legend" by The New Yorker. He tells me, "I'm 63. I've been playing 2, 5 and 1 for 45 years. I don't know many people that can go to work after 45 years and say...

As a boy in Detroit, Michigan, Rick Margitza's mother asked him "do you want to hear a recording of your grandfather playing cello"? Then she put on the Charlie Parker with Strings album. After hearing Charlie Parker play, Rick knew that he wanted to be a jazz saxophone player. Margitza's paternal grandfather, a Hungarian Gypsy violinist, taught him to play the violin at the age of four. His fathe...