The Third Story with Leo Sidran

Joe Alterman is a southern guy with a sunny disposition. He came from Atlanta, and despite having put in years in New York, he never managed to shake off the southern charm. Joe is a piano player who wears his influences on his sleeve. While his contemporaries were deconstructing the music, Joe was drawn to the playing of more classic masters, like Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis and Les McCann. He loved the light touch of Red Garland and Hank Jones, but he also loved the blues and heft of Oscar Peterson, Monty Alexander, and Gene Harris. Early on, while he was learning to play the music by listening to those masters, he also began to establish personal relationships with many of his heroes. Ramsey Lewis described his piano playing as 'a joy to behold', Les McCann states 'As a man and musician he is already a giant'. Journalist Nat Hentoff championed three of Alterman's albums, as well as his writing (Joe wrote liner notes to three Wynton Marsalis/JALC albums), calling one of Joe's columns "one of the very best pieces on the essence of jazz, the spirit of jazz, that I've ever read, and I'm not exaggerating." Joe established relationships with his heroes naturally, instinctively, and soulfully. He was clearly searching for some deeper truth in both the music and the musicians themselves. Eventually, his friendships with the likes of Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis, Les McCann, Nat Hentoff, and Houston Person would begin to straddle the space between musical and spiritual. He found himself turning to Ahmad Jamal for romantic advice, Sonny Rollins helped him with the adversity of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Les McCann illuminated the ties between the black community and the Jewish community. Joe grew up going to Jewish day school, trying to find a way to feel as spiritually engaged by his rabbis and cantors as he did when he listened to his favorite records. He "found in Jazz and black music what [he] had tried to find in Synagogue." After putting in serious time in New York, he moved back to Atlanta and found himself running what was then called the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival (now called Neranenah) and exploring in earnest the question of just what exactly is Jewish music? Subsequently, Joe has become one of the most creative voices in the conversion around contemporary Jewish culture and music today. While his own music may be steeped in tradition, his disposition as a presenter is wide open and radical in its way. Joe recently released The Upside Of Down - recorded at Birdland in New York just before the Pandemic. He was finally able to do a record release gig to celebrate the project, back at Birdland, in late July. The record is one in a series of recordings that showcase his sweet, joyful, classic, swinging approach to the piano trio. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.joealtermanmusic.com/

By the time Antwaun Stanley entered the University of Michigan in the late aughts, he was already 15 years into what could be considered to be a successful singing career. He was signed as a contemporary gospel artist, had made the rounds on TV shows and singing contests, had been through a series of managers, producers and handlers who all recognized the immense electricity in his singing and his stage persona. Meanwhile, he was also just a regular kid from Flint, Michigan, raised by a single mother and trying to walk the straight and narrow path. That dual identity was part of his journey almost from the very beginning - like a superhero. On Sunday mornings he was a star, but by the next day he was back to being a regular student. And when he got to college, he tried his best to blend in, joining an a cappella group and singing with student bands, while at the same time trying to manage his career as a budding gospel star. Even today, he lives with that same duality. While his work with Vulfpeck and collaborations with Scary Pockets and Cory Wong have elevated his notoriety, he still chooses to stay close to home, splitting his time between Flint and Ann Arbor. Antwaun recently released released a collaborative project with producer Tyler Duncan called Ascension, a high class dance pop project that gave each a chance to stretch out and do what they do best. We talked recently about walking the line between spiritual and secular music, managing the responsibility to his fans and his own desire to explore, how he sees his career as "one giant experiment" and "a constant process of discovery", and of course, his experience in Vulfpeck. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

For the third year in a row, I talked to my dad, musician/producer/journalist/philosopher Ben Sidran in honor of his birthday. This time he's turning 78, and we consider the "buddhist roots of jazz", joy and pain, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, the final recordings of Lester Young, saxophonist Willis Jackson's 1978 album Bar Wars, drummer Nate Smith's latest record, how you know when you're old, and the story of the Baal Shem Tov. www.third-story.com www.bensidran.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

Jon Lampley knows how to "get in where you fit in." He's been doing it since he was a boy in an Ohio suburb, spending his week as "the only black kid at school" and his Sundays at Apostolic church in Akron, learning to play gospel music and call the spirit down. He also learned early on that commitment is crucial to what he does, commitment not only to the music he plays but also to the people he plays with, and to the audience too. You get the sense watching Jon that if he doesn't feel it, he won't do it. Maybe that's why he's so in demand in so many projects right now. He's a member of Jon Batiste and Stay Human (catch him regularly on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert), Huntertones (a band he joined in college at Ohio State and that led him to New York), and Cory and the Wongnotes. And works often with O.A.R. and Lawrence, among others. Jon says, "I've just prioritized the people. I've identified the people that I want to associate with and what I need to do, how I need to better myself as a musician and as a human to get into that circle." Huntertones new record Time to Play, produced by Louis Cato and featuring guest collaborations with Cory Wong, Lionel Loueke and Cato, comes out this month. Jon and I spoke recently about growing up in two worlds, learning to play "unnecessarily soulful melodies" and call on the deep well of musical emotion that he learned in church, what he looks for in a collaborator and why he thinks he gets called so much, how he practices and prepares, and what he means when he says "music is the vehicle."

If you've ever seen or heard Michael Bland play drums, you probably didn't forget it. He was legendary practically from the moment he started playing professionally as a teenager in Minneapolis. Maybe you've heard him with Nick Jonas & the Administration, Cory Wong, Chaka Khan, Maxwell, Soul Asylum, Mandy Moore, Johnny Lang, David Crosby or Vulfpeck. Chances are, you definitely heard him playing with Prince - he was the drummer in The New Power Generation, and played on classic Prince records including Diamonds and Pearls, Chaos and Disorder, Emancipation, and more. We talked recently about his early development in Minneapolis, the "guilt by association" of working with controversial artists, getting the gig, keeping the gig, losing the gig, recovering from the gig, confronting racial politics in Minneapolis, playing music with "endless potential", his first time flying on an airplane, keeping the flame lit on local music, and much more. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast

Philip Lassiter spent his early years in Mobile, Alabama. He was the son of a white pentecostal preacher. "They clapped on one and three in my father's church," he says. Moving to Peoria, Illinois as a teenager was a revelation for him. As he tells it, "They beat the racist out of me in Peoria." Lassiter's story, both musical and personal, is a bit hard to unravel. He somehow managed to pay dues in multiple scenes seemingly at the same time. Philip's has been a hero's journey. Blink once and you'll find him in the "Afrocentric" Dallas music scene running the band at a large church, mentoring a young Michael League during the inception of Snarky Puppy. Blink again, and you'll find him doing the New York hustle. Turn around and he's still there, this time living in Nashville. But what's this? Then he's an LA cat, writing arrangements for gospel and r&b records. Wait! Now he's an expat, living in Holland and raising a family with his Dutch Caribbean wife (the talented singer Josje). Phil is a trumpet player, arranger, band leader, teacher, songwriter, cat. His first major recording opportunities were on gospel records, and he has done arrangements for dozens of major praise and worship albums and artists. Eventually that work led him to do arrangements for pop, r&b and soul artists as well. His sound is identifiable, punchy, funky, funny, narrative, empathetic - in fact, you've probably heard his sound so often that you take it for granted. It's that sound; the sound of a horn section hooking up a record, elevating a production, bringing the project to life in such a natural way that you almost can't imagine the song without it. Philip wrote for and toured with Prince as his trumpet player and section leader, and he has worked with a full roster of other top notch musicians as well. Most notably Ariana Grande, Chris Cornell, Kirk Franklin, Timbaland, Roberta Flack, Jill Scott, Kelly Rowland, Fantasia, Anderson. Paak, Yelawolf, Queen Latifa, Al Jarreau, Fred Hammond, The Isley Brothers and Ledisi. Why does he get called so much? "People ask me how did you get this gig or that gig. I always tell them, 'I didn't get the gig. The gig got me.'" Lassiter recently released his fifth solo album, Live In Love, a collection of nasty grooves and thoughtful messages, a love letter to his former life in Los Angeles, a manifestation for a better America, and a gathering of collaborators from around the world.

When Julian Lage plays guitar, it's hard not to get swept up in it. His relationship with the instrument is natural and contagious. Maybe that's because it's been with him for most of his life. When he was just 8 years old, Julian was the subject of an Academy Award nominated documentary film called Jules at Eight. Before he entered his teens, he had already performed with Carlos Santana and jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton. While still in highschool he was a faculty member of the Stanford Jazz Workshop. So he was undoubtedly a child prodigy. Lage plays like someone in love. Despite his productive personal relationship with singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy (she co-produces his new record, Squint along with Armand Hirsch), perhaps the deepest love affair of his life may in fact be with the guitar itself. We talked recently about his new record - his first on Blue Note, which he recorded with drummer Dave King and bassist Jorge Roeder. He told me his story, how he traversed those murky waters of youthful exceptionalism and came out on the other side with more sensitivity, to the music, to his audience, and to himself. During the course of the conversation, Julian also described the connection between the artist and the audience and how he thinks about notes as having the weight of speech. "I want it to feel like I'm talking to you when I play." www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.julianlage.com/

Michael Mayo is cautious when it comes to labels and categories. He prefers for the language he uses to be "descriptive rather than prescriptive." It's easy to understand why: because he defies category in many ways. A singer and composer who draws equally from the deep well of jazz vocal language and from neo soul, he's a modern classic. Growing up in a musical family in LA (both of his parents are successful musicians) he was exposed to a life in music from the very start and had two supportive role models. He says that one of the things he most admired about watching his parents at work was the diversity of the projects they did - from gospel to country and everything in between. Michael was drawn to jazz - he studied at the New England Conservatory and then the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz (now called the The Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz) - but always had a wide range of influences as well including everything from J Dilla to The Beach Boys. But beyond that, he is also a gamer - he loves video games, posts regularly on Twitch and has a band called Shrek Is Love dedicated to the movie Shrek. So he's open. When it came to the more subtle and tender questions of sexual identity, especially in the black community, there were no role models who looked like him. In fact, it would be a long time before he felt that it would be possible to be out as a bisexual black singer and live safely. He tells me, "Traumatized people traumatize people." One gets the sense that through musical liberation, Michael found some personal peace as well. He says, "Just because something hasn't been done before doesn't mean that it can't be done." And he says, "I love living in multiple worlds." After years of coming to terms with questions of identity both personally and musically, he made his stunning debut solo record Bones. Here he talks about managing his relationship with social media, which he describes as finding the "balance between staying sane and being seen", the subtle space between process and performance online, live looping, bi erasure, shedding "Giant Steps", generational trauma, the "syllables discussion" in jazz singing, tokenism, discernment, and living a life authentically without labels. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.michaelmayomusic.com

A story about stories. How seven years and nearly 200 episodes of podcast interviews inspired the record The Art Of Conversation. Excerpts of conversations with Amy Cervini, Andre De Shields, Jorge Drexler, Kat Edmonson, Kurt Elling, John Fields, Larry Goldings, Tatum Greenblatt, Ryan Keberle, Jo Lawry, Orlando le Fleming, Adam Levy, Howard Levy, Anya Marina, Matt Munisteri, Ricky Peterson, Becca Stevens, Doug Wamble. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.leosidran.com/theartofconversation

When singer/songwriter/educator Roxana Amed moved from her home in Argentina to the United States, she didn't walk. But she might as well have. She describes her new record as being like "a bag full of songs and memories" that she collected on her way from one shore to another. She seems to stand with one foot wading in the waters of the Hudson River and the other in the Rio de la Plata. When she left Buenos Aires, she was leaving with an already established career as both a singer and songwriter, having collaborated with many of Argentina's most celebrated artists in both worlds. And when she arrived in America, she began to blow in the wind, like a tumbleweed. So it should come as no surprise that the first track on her new album Ontology is called "Tumbleweed." When Roxana moved to America, she went to Miami, where one might think she fit in perfectly because of her Spanish speaking roots, but in fact in some ways she has felt like more of a stranger there than she would in New York, or Paris, or anywhere else for that matter. Then again, maybe she would feel that way wherever she went, because she's not really any one kind of artist, she's not really sure where she or her music belong - maybe it's somewhere along that long and winding road from Argentina to America. It's that classic paradox when you belong to no-one, you're available to all, when you belong nowhere, you're always in the right place. She is inclined to follow an arrangement of a Miles Davis song with something by Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, or to adapt a Piazzolla tango piece in a jazz quartet, but then sing Cindy Lauper as Argentine folk music. Roxana Amed is an eternal student - she's constantly thinking about her craft, working on it, contemplating it. Maybe that's what makes her such a celebrated teacher. We spoke recently about her new record, and about the ongoing relationship and conversation between artist and audience. She says, "Art is not there to make you comfortable. You have to be surprised. You have to be challenged." We talked about surrendering yourself to your art, about how and why different languages swing, about authenticity and freedom in music, and how the soul of America is black, and we talked about Argentina, Argentine music and identity. www.third-story.com www.patreon.com/thirdstorypodcast www.roxana-amed.com