Mark Masters writes for the kind of jazz ensemble that barely exists anymore... and most of the time, the finished music ends up in a box in his garage. A composer and arranger on the Capri label alongside host Mike Jones, Masters has spent decades building ambitious large-group records around the voices he loves: Steely Dan reimagined, tributes to Sam Rivers and Billy Harper, a date with Art Baron, the last trombonist Duke Ellington ever hired.

He and Jones get into honoring musicians mostly after they're gone - a Lee Konitz centennial project, a new chamber album for bassist Putter Smith - and what it meant to be among the last players to study with the masters firsthand. Along the way: growing up in Gary, Indiana, the studio scene that dried up in both LA and New York, the best advice he ever got ("never fall in love with anything you write"), and why he still arranges in pencil with an old war movie running on VHS. 

Mark Masters Music