The Third Story with Leo Sidran

Pianist, drummer, trumpeter, educator, blogger, George Colligan stopped by recently when he was visiting Brooklyn. After living in New York for 15 years, he relocated to Portland, Oregon for a teaching position in 2011.

He touched on his long career as a sideman, his ideas about "creativity versus tradition", jazz education, how standup comedy and jazz are similar, how playing changes and changing diapers are different, how 911 changed the scene in New York, kids these days, playing with Jack DeJohnette, why chops aren't all that matter, and what flying business class does to improve performance.

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Drummer turned entrepreneur Ryan Gruss on building one of the most creative drum production libraries around (Loop Loft), developing the "Blue Note of drum loops" and the unusual journey to took to get there.

Recording and mix engineer Ryan Hewitt starting paying his dues in the business before he could even cash a check. He grew up surrounded by recording, assisting his father Dave Hewitt on mobile recordings, and eventually entering the business in earnest after college. He worked his way up in the old school way, assisting the best engineers of the day and working in the classic studios of New York.

His journey eventually led him to LA and then to Nashville, where we met to talk about his career, coming up in the tradition, forging new paths, working with new technology, developing his own sound, the value of producers, and when to take a steak of the grill.

Along the way we discuss working with Blink 182, Harry Connick Jr., Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Lumineers, The Avett Brothers, Rick Rubin, John Frusciante, Brad Mehldau, and many more.

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Ben and Leo Sidran remember record producer Tommy LiPuma and play some previously unheard interviews with him. These particular stories talk about a time in his life that hasn't been talked about too much - his childhood in Cleveland, how the radio was his best friend, and how music saved his life, and how being a barber got him to LA.

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What is music therapy? How is it different from traditional talk therapy? Why is music so useful in accessing parts of the brain that we can't get to in other ways? Is all music really a form of therapy? How important is it for creative arts therapists to confront their own relationship with the arts? What is the role of money in the client-therapist relationship? Why are we staying up late on a school night to talk about this? Dr. Brian T Harris Creative Arts Therapist, PHD, MT-BC, LCAT and Mechelle Chestnut, MA, MT-BC, LCAT discuss. www.third-story.com

Alexis Cuadrado is on a quest for the ecstatic truth. It either started in Spain when he was a young boy, or it started 20,000 years ago, depending on how you look at it.

The product of 1980s, post-Franco Spain, Alexis was drawn to a life in music despite his parents' desire for him to do anything he wanted to do "that was normal and not music". He paid his early dues as a bass player in the early 1990s Barcelona scene where American musicians mingled regularly with Spanish players, and a new form of modern folk music was developing called Nuevo Flamenco.

Eventually he felt the siren song of city and crossed over. He moved to New York nearly two decades ago and got to work. It was only after having logged nearly a dozen years in America that Alexis started thinking about the music he left behind. Through a process he refers to as "decoding and recoding" Flamenco, he sought to integrate the folk music of Spain and the jazz, chamber music, and world elements that he had been exploring.

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For a such busy guy, Adam Schatz manages to watch more television than you might imagine. At least, that's what he says. Known to some as a music presenter, co-producer of the Winter Jazz Festival in New York (held every January in downtown Manhattan), saxophone player in an array of local bands ranging from free improvised ensembles to Afro Beat and dance music, and leader of the band Landlady. Apparently he also takes pictures.

We met recently just as he was setting off on a cross country tour with Landlady. Their most recent album had come out just as Winter Jazz Fest wrapped up, so he was in the zone and ready to talk about his thoughts on the scene in New York, his process for writing and producing music, and why it's important to make your grandparents laugh. Along the way he explained to me why I need to leave my house more often.

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Duchess is a three part close harmony vocal group comprised of Amy Cervini, Hilary Gardner and Melissa Stylianou. All three are accomplished jazz singers in their own right, who came together for a one off gig at the 55 Bar in New York's West Village several years ago, and realized that there was something there worth exploring.

"Three fine singers...join together in swinging harmony to whip up music that traffics in delight…this fresh-voiced triumvirate plays it straight from the heart, leaving any trace of camp or post-modern irony at the door." — The New Yorker

This conversation explores how each singer's individual background, how they came to form Duchess, and how they all think about career and craft.

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Benji Rogers was an ex sound-man, bartender, and broke 34 year old musician who was sleeping on an air mattress in his mother's spare room, when he had a vision. Eight years later, he's one of the most innovative, outspoken leaders in the music business.

As he tells it, he has led a "very full life" and he always had an extremely active mind. That's very clear in this conversation. In 2009 Benji launched Pledge Music, a website that connects artists to fans. What started as a small startup with a few ambitious and curious partners living on different sides of the Atlantic has become a major leader in crowd funding for music. 3,000,000 fans and over 50,000 artists have contributed to Pledge Music campaigns.

In recent years, the list of notable artists has swelled and many chart topping projects have been launched through Pledge.

Benji subsequently launched other businesses. His latest project is Dot Blockchain music.

How did Benji make this incredible transition into the world of music business technology, how does he think about his role in the business, and what lessons did he bring with him from his musical life into the world of startups? Also, what is EBITDA?

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Saxophonist Ben Wendel grew up in a loud household and he had to fight to be heard. Maybe that's why it's so important to him to be heard clearly.

Born in Vancouver and raised in Los Angeles, by the time he left the west coast to attend Eastman School of Music, he had already been informed by a community of players and mentors, along with his cohorts in the Leimert Park scene. He carried the openness of that atmosphere with him to Eastman, then back to Los Angeles, and eventually to New York.

In college he connected with a group of like musicians and they formed Kneebody, a band that proudly defies category, but that lives in what Wendel refers to as "jazz adjacent" territory.

Ben works regularly as both a sideman and a leader. His 2015 video series "The Seasons" featured 12 original duets dedicated to (and featuring) 12 different musicians and released over the course of 12 months.

How does working in a visual medium change the way he thinks about making music? What's happening in LA? What was it like to work with Snoop Dogg? Is it important to swing? How do you learn style and sound? Can it be taught?

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