Episodes

Saxophonist Matt Carmichael has been making a big impression on audiences since he emerged on the Scottish jazz scene as a teenager with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland. No longer a teen, his debut album “Where Will The River Flow” was released in March 2021 and caught the attention of the WDR Big Band and Bob Mintzer, who has arranged the entire album for the band with Matt as a featured soloist. This concert will take place in March 2022 if you’re lucky enough to be in Germany th...

Mirna Bogdanovic hails from Slovenia but now calls Berlin home. I can’t remember how I stumbled upon her music but it was love at first listen and I’m not alone in my reaction. Mirna’s debut album “Confrontation” was awarded “Debut Album of The Year” by the Deutscher Jazzpreis in 2021 and she’s making a name for herself with her finely honed songwriting, inventive arranging, and truly contemporary vocal approach. Show Notes: Tracklisting: – Cold Lake – Changes – Rain – Confrontation – Dan...

Israeli pianist, Shai Maestro, is at the helm of a dream trajectory. Fresh out of high school, he received a call from the bassist Avishai Cohen, inviting him to join his trio with drummer Mark Guiliana. Four trio albums later, Shai went on to form his own groups, recording his compositions that superbly fuse virtuosity with melodic sophistication and rhythmic variety. In 2018, he recorded his first album as leader for the storied ECM Records and his second, “Human” was released in January 2021....

It’s a new year, which means it’s the perfect time to bring a new guest to The Jazz Session. While this musician is new to the podcast, she is certainly not a new or unknown entity to jazz musicians and educators the world over. Vocalist Dominique Eade is a musicians’ musician, having recorded with Dave Holland, Fred Hersch and Ran Blake, and performed with Bill Frisell and Anthony Braxton. Dominique’s relationship with the New England Conservatory of Music dates back to 1984, having both gradua...

Acclaimed vocalists Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner, and Melissa Stylianou join forces and voices to become ‘Duchess’, a New York City-based vocal trio known for tight harmonies and big fun, carrying the tradition of the Boswell and Andrews Sisters into the 21st century. They’ve released four albums together, including their most recent “Live at Jazz Standard”, particularly poignant as the much-loved New York jazz venue did not survive the pandemic. We talk about the magic of hearing and seeing Duch...

French vocalist Camille Bertault is a dazzling musician whose expressive personality permeates everything she does. Initially a classical pianist, she soon found her voice, so to speak, as a vocalist, immersing herself in transcribing not only jazz solos by the greats but also intricate classical melodies by Debussy, Bach and more. One of her early claims to fame was penning a French vocalise to Coltrane’s behemoth “Giant Steps” but she pays homage to the tradition of French chanteuse with equal...

Saxophonist Joel Frahm is one of the warmest people I know AND he has one of the warmest tenor sounds to boot. I first became aware of his immense musicality when hearing him on the albums of vocalist Jane Monheit and I’ve been smitten with his lyricism ever since. His latest release, “The Bright Side”, features a chordless trio with bassist Dan Loomis and drummer Ernesto Cervini. The album came out on Anzic Records in June 2021 and is a joyous showcase for Joel’s creativity and his longstanding...

Trumpeter Nadje Noordhuis hails from Australia but makes her home in New York, where she performs both as a bandleader and as an in demand sideman with leaders like Maria Schneider, Darcy James Argue and Anat Cohen. A finalist in the 2007 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, her new genre-bending quintet with Maeve Gilchrist (celtic harp), Jesse Lewis (electric guitar), Ike Sturm (electric bass), and James Shipp (synthesizers, percussion) coolly blends acoustic and electric instrument...

Mike Epstein is the President and Founder of Epstein & Company, an international booking agency that represents a roster of brilliant artists, including Maria Schneider, Fred Hersch, Cyrille Aimee, Jane Bunnett and Maqueque, Donny McCaslin and more. His agency offers booking services for professional touring artists as well as value added services for those who need them including travel, logistics, advancing dates, and tour marketing. We chat about Mike’s Artist Growth Process™, a unique proces...

The Madrid-based pianist Daniel Garcia carries within him a deep sense of the history that has shaped him. After studying at Berklee under the mentorship of Danilo Pérez, Daniel returned to Spain to carve out a reputation as a real force in the Spanish jazz scene, expertly traversing jazz and flamenco landscapes to create a signature, sophisticated sound. His second album for ACT Music “Vía de la Plata” was released in September 2021 and features guests Ibrahim Maalouf, Anat Cohen, and Gerardo N...

Vocalist Luciana Souza grew up in a family of Bossa Nova innovators – her father, a singer and songwriter, and her mother, a poet and lyricist. Her work as a performer transcends traditional musical boundaries, offering authentic jazz insight, sophisticated lineage in world music, and an enlightened approach to new music. While Luciana is a lover of words, having set the poems of Pablo Neruda and Elizabeth Bishop to music, she is also an expert in the art of wordless singing, effortlessly becomi...

John Hollenbeck is a drummer and percussionist possessed of a playful versatility and a virtuosic wit. Whether charting new territory with his long-standing Claudia Quintet or bringing to life popular songs for the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, he is forever seeking to surprise himself and his audiences. I caught up with John to discuss both his most recent, Grammy-nominated recording with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, featuring guests Theo Bleckmann, Kate McGarry, and Gary Versace, and his new Clau...

Named for the Olympian goddess of the hunt and the wild, Artemis is a superlative sextet, an international affair, with members hailing from the U.S., Canada, Israel and Japan. The all-star group features pianist and musical director Renee Rosnes, tenor saxophonist Nicola Glover, clarinetist Anat Cohen, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, bassist Noriko Ueda, drummer Allison Miller, and featured vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant. Their debut album was released on Blue Note Records in September 2020 and, sinc...

Remy Le Boeuf is a Grammy-nominated composer and saxophonist whose music is rooted in the jazz tradition while drawing on various influences, ranging from contemporary classical sounds to indie rock energy. His jazz orchestra “Assembly of Shadows” is a dazzling vehicle both for Remy’s compositions and arrangements, and his voice as a saxophonist. The 20-piece ensemble releases its second album “Architecture of Storms”, featuring guests Dayna Stephens and Julia Easterlin, on 5th November 2021. I ...

Maria Schneider is a multiple Grammy Award winner and a recent Pulitzer Prize finalist in Music for her 2020 double album “Data Lords.” She was last a guest on The Jazz Session a decade ago and to think that she hadn’t yet released her 2013 collaborative album with soprano Dawn Upshaw and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, “Winter Morning Walks”, OR her shimmering, somewhat biographical record 2015’s “The Thompson Fields”. Anyone who is lucky to work with or know Maria, knows that her attention t...

Mandisi Dyantyis is a South African trumpeter and vocalist hailing from Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) in the Eastern Cape. I should be impartial and journalistic in my description of all my guests but I’ve never been one to favour professionalism over enthusiasm. Mandisi is one of my favourite South African musicians and composers. A self-proclaimed “choir boy”, he finally released his debut album “Somandla” in 2018 after decades working as the musical director for Isango Ensemble. The wait...

Kate McGarry and Keith Ganz are partners both in life and music. The musical result of such a kinship is incredibly rich and rare and spans many albums. Their latest record, “What To Wear In The Dark”, was ten years in the making and delicately chronicles world events from the past several years, including the US presidential election to the Sandy Hook tragedy and more. During a stretch of life which included “loss of health, home, and tribe” as Kate put it, the couple discovered a guiding light...

Lydia Liebman is the founder and president of Lydia Liebman Promotions, a leading PR agency based in NYC, with additional operations in London. Her current roster includes artists like the Baylor Project, Somi, Ted Nash and Glenn Close (yes, THAT Glenn Close), and labels like Dot Time Records and Whirlwind Recordings. Lydia regularly lectures about PR and other music industry-related topics and has spoken at several higher education institutions including The Royal Academy of Music in London and...

Lars Danielsson is a stalwart of the Swedish jazz scene, capturing the very best of Nordic jazz and beyond in his compositions. The double bassist and cellist-he’s equally prodigious on both instruments-has released albums for the European label ACT music for over a decade and his latest offering “Cloudland” transported me beyond the confines of, well my home. Thank you, COVID. The calibre of his bandmates past and present-Dave Liebman, Bobo Stenson, Nils Landgren, Youn sun Nah, Tigran Hamasyan-...

Grammy-nominated composer, Miho Hazama is one of the most promising and talented composers/arrangers of her generation. Miho developed her signature jazz chamber orchestra “m_unit” while still a graduate student at the Manhattan School of Music. In fact, that is where I first met Miho when we overlapped, navigating jazz studies and all New York has to offer. Watching her career go from strength to strength since then has been an utter joy. In 2019, she took up a post as the chief conductor of Da...

Terence Blanchard is one of jazz’s most esteemed trumpeters and defies expectations by creating a spectrum of artistic pursuits. He’s a twice-Oscar nominated film composers, and a two-time opera composer whose most recent opera “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” opens New York’s Metropolitan Opera season on 27 September 2021. A month ago, on the 27th August, Terence released his new album Absence on Blue Note Records. It features his synth-inflected band E-Collective and the acclaimed Turtle Island Quar...

Gretchen Parlato burst onto the scene in 2004, when she won the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Voice Competition. Since then, she’s been nominated for a Grammy, released five albums, performed with Wayne Shorter, Kamasi Washington, Becca Stevens and more, and massively influenced several generations of jazz vocalists. After 8 years spent exploring and enjoying motherhood, she made something of return to jazz with her album “Flor”, released on Edition Records in 2021. The album c...

Saxophonist and NEA Jazz Master Dave Liebman was last on The Jazz Session in 2010 so we were due for a catch up, especially because he has a new album “Selflessness: The Music of John Coltrane” out on Dot Time Records on 3 September, a day before his 75th birthday. We chat about Trane (of course!), Dave’s time playing with Miles Davis, and the timelessness of Rodger and Hammerstein’s “My Favourite Things”. Show Notes: Tracklisting: -Mr Day -Peace On Earth -My Favourite Things -Lazy Bird -Se...