Episodes

A brief farewell and a special announcement from The Jazz Session’s host and producer, Nicky Schrire, as the podcast’s 14th Season comes to an end.

Sebastian Scotney is the editor and founder of London Jazz News, an online site that publishes a daily ?ow of news, previews, reviews and interviews. The archive of published articles now stands at over 8,000 pieces, and the publication involves a substantial team of contributors. Seb is also a freelance writer who has penned reviews for the Artsdesk, liner notes for artists like Lars Danielson, biographies for musicians like Michael Wollny, and was a feature contributor to Jazz Line-Up on BBC R...

New York Voices are a jazz vocal quartet comprising four of my favourite musicians and people-Darmon Meader, Lauren Kinhan, Kim Nazarian, and Peter Eldridge. They’ve been described as “the gold standard for jazz vocals”, “timeless”, and “masters of their art.” They recently celebrated their 34th birthday and seem to go from strength to strength. Collaborations with Bob Mintzer, and the WDR Big Band are peppered throughout a touring career that has seen them perform on stages all over Europe, the...

I get slightly dizzy thinking about trumpeter Dave Douglas’ creative output. He is a performer, a recording artist whose release record is prolific, an educator (including a ten-year stint as artistic director of the Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music at The Banff Centre in Canada), and a pioneer of artist-run labels with Greenleaf Music which is nearly 20 years old. His musical collaborations are many and varied, including revered artists like Joe Lovano, Linda May Han Oh, Bill Frisell, and vo...

In honour of Mother’s Day, which occurred on 8 May, I am delighted to have gathered eight jazz musicians who also all happen to be mothers. These mums are of varying nationalities and at the top of their creative games. Laila Biali (Canada), Sarah Elizabeth Charles (USA), Christine Jensen (Canada), Lina Nyberg (Sweden), Linda May Han Oh (Australia), Tomoko Omura (Japan), Zoe Rahman (UK), and Sara Serpa (Portugal) joined me for a conversation about their music, their experiences as mothers in the...

Oded Lev-Ari is the co-owner and director of Anzic Records, a label he has run for the past decade alongside clarinetist Anat Cohen. The label describes itself as “a New York City based recording label specialising in good music” and has released albums by artists including Anat, the vocal trio Duchess, the trumpeter Avishai Cohen, Joel Frahm and Ernesto Cervini. As well as helming Anzic Records, Oded is also a pianist, and a Grammy-nominated composer and arranger, known for his work as the musi...

Saxophonist and songwriter Matthew Herd hails from Scotland but lives in London where he leads the band Seafarers. Featuring some of the finest UK-based jazz musicians, like vocalist Lauren Kinsella and drummer Dave Hamblett, the group just released their second album, aptly titled “II”. Recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, it builds on the groups first album that combined contemporary folk and chamber pop with an emphasis on the song at hand. The second album also sees Matthew move m...

Nikki Iles is a pianist, a professor of jazz at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, and a composer. In some ways, I think of her as a British jazz gem, but that would do a disservice to the fact that she’s very much loved in other jazz communities around the globe. Her musical work in the UK has seen her become a leading figure in the British jazz tradition. She is known for her collaborations with vocalists Norma Winstone and Tina May, and has expande...

SFrench soprano saxophonist Emile Parisien danced onto my radar when I saw him perform in duo with accordionist Vincent Peirani at the 2014 Berlin Jazz Festival. He was virtuosic, superbly musical, and, most importantly, gave me a newfound appreciation for the soprano saxophone. He has been recording as sideman and leader for the Munich-based ACT label for ten years and his latest album “Louise” is his 7th offering as bandleader. For the first time, he teams up with a core band comprising both E...

South African writer, teacher, media consultant and creative industries researcher Gwen Ansell is a former Louis Armstrong Visiting Professor at the Center for Jazz Studies, Columbia University, and the author of Soweto Blues: Jazz, Politics and Popular Music in South Africa and the textbook Introduction to Journalism. She is also the person to whom I defer whenever asked about anything relating to South African jazz! We have an in-depth conversation about the state of arts journalism in South A...

Tierney Sutton is a Los Angeles and Paris-based vocalist with a sensational career under her belt-and music more to come, I might add. She has released fourteen albums, nine of which have been nominated for Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Her fifteenth album comes out on 6 May 2022 and is called “Paris Sessions II”. Like the first volume, it features guitarist Serge Merlaud and bassist Kevin Axt, but this time flautist Hubert Laws joins the fray and the results are both intimate and mus...

I want to preface this interview by saying that I don’t care much for the hype machine or popular opinion and am led, predominantly, by my interest in an artist and the question of whether or not I enjoy their music. Such was the case when a publicist contacted me about one of their artists-a capable musician with a pretty banal musical approach. I explained to the publicist the kind of music I enjoyed and she cleverly pitched me another of her artists, the Durham-raised, London-based pianist Pa...

Vocalist Nomfundo Xaluva is a multi-award winning jazz singer known for her ability to weave together her Xhosa identity, South African jazz roots, and a contemporary approach to songwriting and singing. With two albums out on Universal Music, she is also a beloved educator who recently became a Lecturer in Jazz Studies at the University of Cape Town. She’s performed across South Africa and is one of the most exciting figures in the South African jazz community. Show Notes: Tracklisting: – Ox...

Matt Pierson is an award-winning producer whose discography is studded with the brightest stars in contemporary jazz-Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman, Pat Metheny, Jane Monheit, and countless others. He led Blue Note’s marketing and A&R departments before taking up the post of running Jazz A&R for Warner Brothers Records. After a stint consulting for Sony Masterworks, he continues to produce albums for musicians including Bria Skonberg, Pasquale Grasso, and Samara Joy. Show Notes: Tracks Played – Sa...

Vocalist Michael Mayo is a dazzling interpreter, improviser and musician. He comes from brilliant musical stock in the form of his parents Scott Mayo and Valerie Pinkston-Scott is currently Sergio Mendes musical director and Valerie has lent her vocals to artists ranging from Whitney Houston to Diana Ross. But Michael will tell us more about his parents during the course of our conversation. Michael grew up in Los Angeles, studied at the New England Conservatory and the Thelonious Monk Institute...

Vocalist Areni Agbabian is an experimental improviser, folk and sacred music singer, and pianist. As a vocalist she has worked in new opera, dance, contemporary jazz, new music and multi-media performance. In fact, I first met Areni a decade ago during a course at the School of Improvised Music in Brooklyn, New York. We remained in touch and met up again in Paris in 2014 when she was there studying sacred Armenian music (and I was just eating croissants and ogling Parisian architecture). Her sub...

Alto saxophonist Will Vinson hails from England but established a great many of his musical collaborations while living in New York City. These working relationships with musicians like Aaron Parks, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Ari Hoenig, to name a few, have resulted in Will’s reputation as a saxophonist with incredible power and dramatic sensitivity, whose playing is characterised by his imposing sound and technique. Will’s recording output has also been prolific. In fact, we met over Zoom (Will was i...

Dave Stapleton is the founder and driving force behind the London-based label Edition Records. A brilliant pianist and composer in his own right, he has grown a label that now boasts releases by Dave Holland, Chris Potter, Daniel Herskedal, Snowpoet, and Kurt Elling, who recently won the label its first Grammy Award when he received Best Jazz Vocal Album at the 2021 Grammys. Show Notes: Tracks Played: – Rob Luft: Life Is The Dancer – Slowly Rolling Camera feat. Mark Lockheart: Feels Like Fic...

Vocalist and composer Somi talks about diving into the world of South African vocalist and activist Miriam Makeba for her upcoming album “Zenzile: The Reimagination Of Miriam Makeba” due 4th March 2022. The album follows the September 2021 premiere and tour of Somi’s musical theatre production based on the life of Makeba, “Dreaming Zenzile”. Somi talks about tackling the world of Miriam’s music, collaborating with guests from across the African continent, from Angelique Kidjo to Nduduzo Makhathi...

Drummer Jared Schonig is much-loved both in the New York jazz community and amongst Broadway musicians. He took on the gargantuan, brilliant task of releasing a double album, “Two Takes Volumes 1 & 2”, on Anzic Records in September 2021. The recording features quartet renditions of his music, followed by big band arrangements of the same repertoire by eight of the great arrangers working today-Jim McNeely, Miho Hazama, Darcy James Argue, Alan Ferber, Laurence Hobgood, Brian Krock, John Daversa a...

The Franco-Irish violinist Fiona Monbet takes the jazz violin tradition, pioneered by artists like Didier Lockwood and Stéphane Grappelli before him, and manages to pay homage while ushering the instrument, beautifully, into the current day jazz clime. In fact, Lockwood once declared Fiona to be his “spiritual daughter”. With her new album “Maelström”, she expresses not just the many dazzling facets of her instrument, but also how genres like tango, folk song, and Bossa nova can be unified throu...

Gail Boyd is the president of Gail Boyd Artist Management and the entertainment law firm Gail W Boyd P.C. She was a founding partner in Boyd, Staton and Cave, the first African American female law firm in New York and has been involved in entertainment law since 1976. As a lawyer, Gail Boyd has represented jazz artists such as Betty Carter, Tommy Flanagan, Kenny Barron, Gretchen Parlato, and Randy Weston. As a manager, she currently represents John Clayton, Lakecia Benjamin, Scott Tixier, and Nd...

Vocalist Theo Bleckmann is in a league and a category of his own. Equally dazzling when interpreting the music of Kate Bush or singing the songs of Charles Ives, he made his ECM Records leader debut in 2017 with his album “Elegy”. More recently, he collaborated with the brass quartet The Westerlies for their haunting record “This Land.” Theo and I talked about his approach to recording versus performing live, his cherished collaborations with drummer John Hollenbeck and pianist Shai Maestro, and...

Anat Cohen and Marcello Gonçalves are superb musicians as individuals and as a duo, they shine even brighter. “Reconvexo” is their second album together and sees the pair turn their attention to the deep well of music from the Música Popular Brasileira songbook. Recorded while quarantined together in Rio, these songs come from Brazil’s greatest composers and are interpreted by one of jazz’s greatest clarinetists and the dazzling Brazilian 7-string guitarist. Show Notes: Tracklisting: – Reconv...