This flutist and composer was born in Chicago, where her grandparents arrived during the Great Migration. “It wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely an upgrade from Mississippi.” There’s a slogan the visitors bureau won’t be using.  A musician reflects on her home town and one of its sons. Another in our series On Collaboration with violist … Continue reading »

Before embracing a more salubrious life in Los Angeles, he rollicked through a years-long spree back east. “New York is paradise if you’re a drunk, and a very challenging place to be sober.” A slogan inexplicably rejected by the New York Visitors Bureau. This master of electronic dance music talks about religion, wilderness, and David Bowie’s … Continue reading »

Every musician relishes applause — who wouldn’t? — but the principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic also finds value in an audience booing. “To know that someone was infuriated by a performance or a set or something like that is kind of enjoyable in a sick sort of way, too.” The joys of a … Continue reading »

At age nine, he saw a Leonard Bernstein Young People’s Concert featuring Dmitiri Shostakovich and something happened. In a good way. Trauma free. A conversation with the Pulitzer-winning composer, introduced by Ralph Farris, violist in the quartet Ethel and creator of Co-Lab, a virtual conference on collaboration.  And these guys have. Splendidly. Continue reading »

This trumpet player has sold 72 million albums worldwide, including five number ones, and also founded A&M records. Ordinarily we’d talk about his person, place, and thing, but instead we devote our conversation to his person, songwriter Burt Bacharach — 73 top-forty hits. One enormously successful musician talks about another, with respect and affection. Continue reading »

This trumpeter and composer is celebrated for his film scores, especially for Spike Lee. His opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones is slated to open the new season at the Met. In this episode, we break format; instead of person, place, and thing, we talk song, song, and song. A conversation about three pieces of music. Continue reading »

Does genre give music history and context or is it merely confining? “Genre is BS. I’m sorry. It just is,” says this founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and artistic director of Silkroad. The story of Black string band music — fiddles, banjos, and Jane Austen. Continue reading »

Celebrated as a performer and composer, this Columbia professor is particularly noted for his computer music that draws on artificial intelligence. So is the computer a tool for making sound or a tool for thinking? Neither. “It’s actually a tool for investigating subjectivity.” A conversation made possible by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Continue reading »

His work with Talking Heads lofted him to the empyrean, and he just kept going, making art, music, movies, books. He’s been particularly fortunate in his collaborators – Brian Eno, Robert Wilson, Twyla Tharp.  Spike Lee filmed his Broadway show, American Utopia, which streams on HBO this month. Clearly, one of the silliest things F. Scott Fitzgerald … Continue reading »

This singer, songwriter, and author didn’t have an easy start. “I had a chaotic childhood, to put it mildly, an abnormal childhood.” Then she discovered Laura Ingalls Wilder. Little Therapist on the Prairie? Nope. A guide to an orderly life. Or so it seemed to a kid. The result: an impressively accomplished adult.  Continue reading »

This composer and musician admires the Dalai Lama but got a little anxious when asked to sing for him: “They locked me in my dressing room…then there was a monk that was sitting next to me kind of glaring.” A conversation at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Music: Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Carmen Rockwell. Continue reading »

I expected this opera director to be astute and eloquent, and he was. I did not expect him to do first-rate impressions of Tom Waits, William Burroughs, and his own father. (Be honest: neither did you.) At Pratt Institute, his alma mater. Music by Pat Irwin and Walter Hawkes.  Continue reading »