Soundcheck

The Brooklyn band called Momma revolves around the singing and songwriting team of Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten who combine gauzy vocal harmonies with walls of roaring guitars. Their 2022 album Household Name was a critical favorite, and their 2025 album, Welcome To My Blue Sky, builds on that success with songs about longing, infidelity, leaving people behind, and unknown futures. Etta and Allegra of Momma play uplugged versions of those songs, in-studio.

Set list: 1. Bottle Blonde 2. I Want You (Fever) 3. Rodeo

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The Icelandic keyboardist and composer Eydís Evensen has released three albums of music that blends classical lyricism with the repeating patterns of post-minimalist music. "Her compositions, guided by emotion, are intimate explorations of mourning, hope, reflection, and renewal—creating a world that invites listeners to feel their way through the music" (Lincoln Center event program). On her latest LP, Oceanic Mirror, one might hear reflections of Iceland’s landscapes – glacial stillness, volcanic tension, the power and motion. Eydís Evensen plays new songs from the album, in-studio. She plays in New York at Lincoln Center's David Rubenstein Atrium on Jan. 9, 2026.

Set list: 1. OM, Helena's Sunrise 2. Drifter 3. Winter's Void, Somnolent

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The L.A-based, Brooklyn-born band called Boyish is built around the songwriting of India Shore and Claire Altendahl, and while they’ve been releasing music since 2018, they’ve just put out their debut album, called Gun. The album presents a series of scenes and character studies from a fictional American town called Gun, which seems to be haunted – by memories and dreams for sure, but also possibly by a ghost. All accompanied by roaring guitars and frayed vocals. Boyish plays in-studio for the Soundcheck Podcast.

Set list: 1. Jumbos 2. A Town Called Gun 3. Prom

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English singer and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Wolf built his sizable reputation on a blend of Baroque pop and arty, classically-informed folk-rock. But a series of setbacks kept him from the music scene for a decade, before he returned with an EP in 2023, and in June of 2025, his latest LP called Crying The Neck. Patrick Wolf joins us at the piano, to play new songs, in-studio. 

Set list: 1. Enter the Day 2. The Last of England 3. Foreland 

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Both old and new, Austin-based band Black Pumas is centered around guitarist and producer Adrian Quesada and 27-year-old songwriter Eric Burton. Grammy Award-winning Quesada has played in Grupo Fantasma and Brownout, and accompanied artists from Prince to Daniel Johnston. Burton grew up in church and then got heavily involved in musical theater. He arrived in Austin in 2015 after busking his way across the country from Los Angeles, and connected with Quesada on the phone. From idea to session to self-titled debut album, they've been making music that is neither retro nor derivative, with influences ranging from Sam Cooke to Neil Young and Ghostface Killah. Now a touring machine, Black Pumas brings their skillful combination of folky strum, sticky funk, dusty psych, and old soul to an in-studio session. (From the Archives, 2019.)

Set list: 1. Colors 2. Black Moon Rising 3. Oct 33 

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Listen to music from American musicians, the harpist Ashley Jackson and the Oklahoma-based Cherokee singer and songwriter Ken Pomeroy. Both sets come from our Soundcheck series of live performances and interviews, available as a twice-weekly podcast, wherever you get podcasts. 

With her clever guitar playing and powerful stories, Oklahoma-based Cherokee singer and songwriter Ken Pomeroy draws on brutal honesty and the songwriting skills she has honed since she was 11 years old. She’s already found herself on the big screen and small when her song “Wall of Death” made its way onto the Twisters soundtrack, while Hulu’s Reservation Dogs featured her soul-mining gem, “Cicadas.” Pomeroy touches on her Native American heritage (mentioning coyotes – a troubling omen) and somewhat painful, personal past, as she plays songs from her 2025 album Cruel Joke (Rounder Records), in-studio.

Ken Pomeroy Set list: 1. Stranger 2. Days Getting Darker 3. Flannel Cowboy

Then, listen to harpist, soloist, collaborator (Harlem Chamber Players), educator, and arranger Ashley Jackson as she presents music from her 2025 album called Take Me To The Water (Decca Records). In the American spiritual tradition, water is a powerful metaphor for freedom and for moving from this life to the next. Jackson’s record takes listeners on a watery journey through works by Debussy, the jazz harpist Alice Coltrane, blues, and some classic spirituals. As Jackson declares in a statement about the record, ”Water is something that we all need. It sustains us, it gives us life. Take Me to the Water reminds us we have a choice: we can let water be the thing that divides us, or, it can allow us to come together through our shared humanity.” She plays some of her arrangements of spirituals on a sculpted maple harp, in-studio.

Ashley Jackson’s Set list: 1. River Jordan 2. Deep River II 3. Take Me to the Water I

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Ye Vagabonds are brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn. They grew up in rural Carlow but moved to Dublin in 2012 and became known on the traditional Irish, blues and folk scenes in the city, playing folk songs as well as their own original material, (Bandcamp). They’re part a wave of bands who’ve remade or extended the folk tradition; they’ve also collaborated with members  of the Dublin new music group Crash Ensemble. Their award-winning music is a traditional mix of traditional Irish and European music, old time American tunes, sibling harmonies, and the music of the 1960s folk revival. Ye Vagabonds are working on their fourth album due in 2026, to be called All Tied Together, and they’ll play some of their new songs, in-studio.

Set list: 1 On Sitric Road 2. The Flood 3. Danny

Title "Backwards to Go Forwards" by Myles O'Reily
Photo courtesy of Aiken Promotions 

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Cochemea is a sax player, composer and arranger who spent some years playing vintage-style soul with Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, as well as stints with Amy Winehouse, David Byrne, hip hop duo Run The Jewels and dozens more. Born Cochemea Gastelum into an Indigenous Yaqui family in California, he’s found time over the past few years to release three albums of his own music, the latest being Vol. III: Ancestros Futuros. These albums don’t attempt to untangle the knot of Indigenous, Spanish, and American cultural interactions over the centuries, instead using them as musical source material. With a lightly processed alto sax sound and lots of percussion, Cochemea and his band create songs that usually don’t have words, although wordless vocals, chanted or sung, are part of the sonic tapestry. The result is music that is not only beyond category, it almost seems beyond time, as the album title suggests. Cochemea and his band have filled our studio, mostly with percussion instruments to play a live set. (-John Schaefer)

Set list: 1. Otros Mundos 2. Ancestros Futuros 3. Omeyocan

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The now London-based Polish pianist and composer Hania Rani quickly attracted fans with her 2019 album of solo piano works in the post-classical style, a blend of classical lyricism and minimalist patterns. Her later albums expanded to include electronics, and her voice; she is equally versed in the music of composers like Philip Glass and bands like Radiohead. But her new record is something different – a four part piano concerto with orchestra, called Non Fiction, which is a reflection on the human cost of war. The work was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, with a 45-piece orchestra and experimental instrumentalists Rakhi Singh (Manchester Collective), Jack Wylie (Portico Quartet), and percussionist/composer Valentina Magaletti. Hania Rani performs the piano part of the opening movement of the piece Non Fiction, and other original works, in-studio. 

Set list: 1. Non-Fiction I - Sonore 2. Nostalgia 3. F Major

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Master violinist/vocalist/composer L. Shankar (aka Shenkar) has spent the past four decades developing a personal style that ranges from strict Indian classical music to Western instrumental pop although usually he lands somewhere in the middle. Since playing his first solo concert at the age of seven, he has gone on to accompany many of South India’s leading vocalists and become a major soloist. Schooled in voice, violin, and the drums, he has composed new ragas and folk songs, and played with countless other master musicians. In the 1970s, with John McLaughlin, Zakir Hussain, Vikku Vinayakram, and Ramnad Raghavan, he co-founded the legendary Indo-jazz group Shakti. In the 1980s, he introduced a custom-made 10-string double violin capable of covering the whole range of the orchestra’s string section from violin to double bass. He has collaborated with Frank Zappa and Peter Gabriel and has continued to expand the international audience for Indian music, often combining North Indian (Hindustani) and South Indian (Carnatic) styles, (Robert Browning Associates program notes, 2022). L. Shankar performs original works, in-studio.

Set list: 1. Ananda Nadamadum Tillaj Sankara 2. Ganapathiye Varuvaai  3. Shamudu

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