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Mourning and Hope: A Conversation with Susan Alcorn

For centuries, music has served as an empowering call for the oppressed and alienated. The origins of Blues, jazz, and rock all have their core in the subjugation of Black America. In Nazi Germany, youths would covertly undermine the Reich by playing verboten swing music in hidden corners of their community. Fela Kuti used Afrobeat as […]

Dedication: A Conversation with Dr. Eddie Henderson

One would be hard-pressed to find a figure that better represents the evolution of modern improvisation-based music than Eddie Henderson. At age nine, the trumpeter studied with the master of the jazz idiom – Louis Armstrong. Eight years later, Henderson met Miles Davis, who shifted his focus away from European classical music. Later, Henderson became […]

Painting with Sound: A Conversation with Sam Newsome

From advertising jingles to a neighbor’s booming subwoofer we are continually surrounded by music. in modern life But what is “music”? Cannot a sound without a “musical” intent nevertheless have a musical element? Consider something as innocuous as taking a shower. If one truly listens to the water steadily pouring overhead, one can sense gravity […]

Viking of Sixth Avenue: A Conversation with Ghost Train Orchestra’s Brian Carpenter on Moondog

For several decades starting in the late 1940s, one could frequently find a blind, long-bearded, mysterious figure – cloaked with a horned helmet and spear – surveilling the looming highrise towers of his urban midtown Manhattan kingdom. Dubbed the “Viking of Sixth Avenue”, many passers-by wrote the man off as an eccentric madman best ignored. […]

Sit with Sound: A Conversation with Sarah Belle Reid

Far too many people use the terms listening and hearing interchangeably. But in reality, as composer Pauline Oliveros noted, “listening is not the same as hearing and hearing is not the same as listening.” The key distinction between the two is the amount of intentional effort the perceiver puts into understanding their surroundings. Listening requires […]

Composing Peace: A Conversation with Miguel Atwood-Ferguson on ‘Les Jardins Mystiques, Vol. 1’

Much attention – rightfully so – over the last several years has been paid to the Los Angeles improvisational music scene. Shapeshifting multi-instrumentalist Atwood-Ferguson has been at the core of those developments with contributions to over six hundred recordings, including many from his home city. He is even on two of this writer’s favorite releases […]

Unmined Field: A Conversation with Kate Gentile on ‘Find Letter X’

For centuries, the letter “X” has represented the unknown. On a pirate’s map, crossed diagonals denote some undiscovered treasure. In algebra, students must determine ”X” as an unrevealed variable. In an episode of the Simpsons – a consistent bellwether of Western popular culture over the last three decades – even the imbecilic Homer knows it […]

Resilient Hope: A Conversation with Caroline Davis on ‘Alula: Captivity’

The alula, sometimes called the bastard wing, is a small but important bone on a bird’s wing that plays an essential role in flight. It is a fitting name for Caroline Davis’ electro-acoustic outings as her use of samples lifts the ensemble from more traditional moorings. But what happens when these appendages are fractured? How […]

Shimmer Wince: A Conversation with Anna Webber on Just Intonation

It is common for musicians to incorporate recent discoveries – whether the adoption of cutting-edge technology or novel compositional processes – into their works to present a new sound. Far less discussed, however, are cases where artists revisit old conceptions to see how they can forge previously uncharted paths. Anna Webber’s explorations of just intonation […]