This great jazz pianist has been making modern music for most of his 92 years, but he denies it, quoting Duke Ellington: “There’s no such thing as modern music.” He reconciled this paradox in our conversation at the piano at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center. We spoke, he played, and then: birthday cake! … Continue reading »

 It is the best work that lasts, says this fine musician who’s created plenty, and history determines what that is: “Time will tell,” he says. I demur: “Time won’t tell.” It may be that only good work endures, but just a tiny portion of it will be enjoyed 100 years from now, and that selection … Continue reading »

  During his 45 years producing the concert series Highlights in Jazz, he has gotten to know many brilliant musicians. Dizzy Gillespie once came by the house and played for his cat. But is jazz, if not dead then relegated to a museum piece? The future of an art form: at BMCC-Tribeca Performing Arts Center … Continue reading »

  A performer has obligations to her audience, of course, but jazz singer Tierney Sutton believes that the audience also has obligations to the performer: to be alert, to be present, to listen acutely. “And if I can’t be in that state,” she says, “I don’t go.” For her, music is a spiritual act, an … Continue reading »

  For 33 years, he was David Letterman’s music director and comic sideman, a career that began in Canada with the Toronto production of Godspell, as did those of Gilda Radner, Martin Short, and Andrea Martin. Some production! Some careers! And now what? What do you do when your job ends after three decades? Savvy … Continue reading »

  DJ Alan Freed, who might have coined the term “rock’n’roll,” was destroyed in the payola scandals of the fifties, but he was no more corrupt than his colleagues, says Kenny Vance. And Freed staged some of the first integrated rock shows. Does this mitigate his conduct? Sharp ideas about radio, rock, and the invention … Continue reading »

  This Lakota musician is a universalist, alert to the commonalities among religions, nations, people. In our conversation at the New York Baha’i Center, he notes that nearly every culture has some kind of flute and some form of fasting. Is the latter a protest against the former? Certainly not. He himself is a flute player … Continue reading »

  Best known for his work with Peter, Paul and Mary, he has much to say about music as a political force, but his most surprising comment was this: even when writing songs, he thinks visually, in shapes not sounds. And he has great stories about “the most feared person in Greenwich Village” and Mary … Continue reading »

 Life is constructed from the stories we tell, suggests this splendid musician, film-maker (and more). “What else is there but stories?” she asks. “Well,” I reply geriatrically, “there’s the truth.” Or is there? She has a more nuanced view (or perhaps just a darker one). A conversation about myth-making, with side trips to the Venice … Continue reading »

 HBO’s Vinyl is gone, but its splendid soundtrack endures. “’I always seek out experts,’ said Randall Poster, one of the show’s music supervisors, who enlisted the Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo to help him build up the punk bona fides on Vinyl. Mr. Ranaldo brought on his own frequent collaborators, including studio veterans with a … Continue reading »

 A member of the Del Fuegos, he went on to teach at NYU, work on Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison documentary, and write a biography of Tom Petty. During our conversation at the Princeton Public Library, he asserted that creative work is often the product of a miserable childhood. A counter-example offered by the audience: Leonard Nemoy, … Continue reading »