My guest is analog synthesizer master Doug Lynner, who has performed evolving live compositions on the Serge Modular Synthesizer for over 40 years, as well as editing the classic electronic music magazine Synapse. Who invented the electronic music synthesizer, and why did they do it?  I thought I should dig into this a little,  some […]

I talk with guitarist, composer, bandleader and musical polymath John Schott, whose work spans the genres of jazz, pop, folk and contemporary composition. Most artists, either through their own natural inclination or following commercial considerations, limit their work, and thereby also their Musical Brand Image to a particular identifiable style or genre. My guest John […]

My guest is eco-minimalist composer and violinist Wendy Reid. Wendy has been working for over 30 years on her unique body of “Tree Pieces”, which define a music based on natural processes. She also works with birds whom she regards as authentic musical collaborators. There’s a point in the life of most artists when they […]

I talk with Jon Raskin of ROVA Saxophone Quartet, about long-term collaboration, language poets, graphic scores, jaw harps and more. (photo: Michael Zelner)   The ROVA saxophone quartet has been around for over 35 years. The original group was Andrew Voigt, Bruce Ackley, Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin. About 25 years ago Andrew Voigt left, and […]

I’m really happy that Barbara Golden and I could collaborate on this show, and re-publish her fascinating interview with Roscoe Mitchell, the saxophonist, composer, and leading light of the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago. Barbara interviewed Roscoe, who teaches now at Mills College in Oakland, for her once-a-month 3-hour radio show on KPFA-FM in Berkeley, […]

German tubist, composer and bandleader Carl-Ludwig Hübsch. What happens if you give a tuba to a teenage punk-rock drummer? Well, if it was Carl Ludwig Huebsch, it set him off on two paths which he pursued simultaneously, playing the tuba in a traditional community brass band, doing german oompah folk music by day and playing […]

Filmmaker Caroline Martel  is the producer and director of Wavemakers, a documentary about the Ondes Martenot, an electronic musical instrument invented in France in the 1920’s. Her documentary traces the unusual history of the instrument and its enthusiasts from its creation through to the present. (photo: N. Corre) The flood of technical inventions appearing at […]

My guest is German turntablist, saxophonist and improviser Ignaz Schick.  As William Gibson famously said, the future has arrived: its just not evenly distributed. And experimental music, an international phenomenon, is likewise not evenly distributed, it has its handful of influential capitals, centers of concentrated activity. We in the Bay Area like to think that […]

Today my guest is French contrabassist, vocalist, improviser and composer Joëlle Léandre.  (photo by JFPicaut) When she first emerged on the european musical scene in the 1970’s, as a young conservatory student, she was quickly recognized as a major figure. She’s gone on to a career which has helped to define the nature of contemporary […]

Scat-singer / nuclear physicist Lorin Benedict. Lorin Benedict, of Oakland, California. Lorin’s music stretches the boundaries of traditional jazz scat-singing, with excursions into hip-hop, neo-classical fugues, and the borders of free improvisation. He also has an unusually developed ‘nonsense language’ vocabulary underlying his work.  http://lorinbenedict.com  http://lorinbenedict.bandcamp.com     Show Narration This is Noisy People. I’m […]