Soundcheck

Fiery guitarist/songwriter Benjamin Booker's ecstatic, gritty, and soulful sounds channel punk rock & vintage soul, gospel and blues. He joins us live in the studio.

Jazz pianist Randy Weston has long been exploring the African roots of American music. In this web extra, hear some jazz, blues, Chinese, Cuban, West African, and North African music.

The Brooklyn-based five piece, Landlady, led by agitator Adam Schatz, brings their art/pop sound to our studio along with a string quartet.

New Orleans-based 7-piece outfit, The Revivalists, dig into all kinds of roots for their soulful rockenroll and they’ll play their hearts out for us in the Soundcheck studio. 

The band Wilsen serves up fingerpicked folk guitar, crisp rhythms, & electronic flourishes, overlaid with Tamsin Wilson's voice. They play some of their dream-folk songs in the studio.

Alan Gilbert, when he took over the New York Philharmonic, in 2009, became the first NY-born Music Director of the ensemble. Gilbert wraps up his tenure with the orchestra this June, and somehow in his farewell time, he was able to visit with Soundcheck. In the podcast, he modestly recounts how he came in hoping to re-establish the personality of the NY Phil, how he challenged the group to achieve a “new normal,” – working with the orchestra as part of any production to make it an event, from balling up pieces up paper and throwing them at Gilbert, having a tea party & dancing during “Petrushka,” and that he made sure to bring back composers-in-residence. Gilbert also lingers on the highlights of his time: mounting György Ligeti's work, “Le grand macabre,” the Contact! Series, and the NY Phil Biennial. Many thanks for the past eight years of creative leadership, Maestro! 

Pianist George Winston wrote his latest record, Spring Carousel, in the hospital recovering from a bone marrow transplant. Its proceeds will benefit cancer research. He joins us live.

The Dover Quartet performs selections from Daniel Schlosberg’s Twin Peak Fantasy – a musical kaleidoscope of Angelo Badalamenti’s renowned score of the original TV series.

American pianist & “Legend of Jazz,” Randy Weston, has once again stretched across history to forge connections to an African past. He performs some of The African Nubian Suite live.