Vocalist Roseanna Vitro has enjoyed a long career collaborating with some of the icons of the jazz world, Kenny Barron, Fred Hersch, Clare Fischer and many others. Vitro grew up with a Sinatra-loving father who ran a Flamingo nightclub and a mother who sang country and gospel. While she has a deep love for those styles, she is a solid bebop fan and on her new CD, Sing a Song of Bird, she celebrates one of her favorite bebop musicians--Charlie Parker--with three of her favorite vocalists-- Marion Cowings, Sheila Jordan and Bob Dorough. Each has inspired, influenced, and formed who she is as a musician and person. Sing a Song of Bird, brings these three together in solo and duo performances featuring new compositions celebrating their mutual admiration for each other and for Charlie Parker.
Nick Finzer
Trombonist Nick Finzer’s new CD, Out of Focus, honors the composers and musicians who have inspired him throughout his life. Finzer found the pandemic lockdown creatively challenging but ultimately useful in giving him the time to focus differently, record with others remotely, and create fresh readings on the music of some of his favorites, J.J. Johnson, Duke Ellington, Hoagy Carmichael and others.
Rachael Sage
Singer/songwriter/poet, visual artist, Rachael Sage is inspired by multiple musical influences, everything from Broadway and pop to folk and jazz. She has a drama degree from Stanford and went on to a year with the Actors Studio. The NY Times describes her performances as alternately channeling her inner Fanny Brice and a Jewish Norah Jones.” I’m Judy Carmichael and this is Jazz Inspired.
Rachael’s latest release, Poetica, is a spoken word and music collaboration with some of her favorite musicians, made during the pandemic through an embrace of new technologies and a desire to create something meaningful despite forced isolation.
JOSHUA HENRY
Three-time Tony and Grammy-nominee, Joshua Henry is best known for his stage work in The Scottsboro Boys on Broadway and as Aaron Burr in the first touring company of Hamilton. Lin-Manuel’s directorial debut, Tick Tick Boom, in which Joshua appears alongside Andrew Garfield and Vanessa Hudgens, came to theaters and on Netflix in November 2021, the month after we recorded this conversation.
Joshua took advantage of his time away from the stage during the pandemic shutdown to focus solely on his first love—music--and recorded his debut CD, Grow, which brings together his love for jazz, soul, funk and pop. Joshua talked to me from his home in Los Angeles about his wide range of influences, including Nat King Cole, whom he was celebrating the week we spoke in a series of performances at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.
Jane Lynch
Actress Jane Lynch is a hilarious presence in the Christopher Guest films, Best In Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration. Although she was initially reluctant to dive into Guest’s improvisational approach to character development in these films, she loved the process and feels it pushed her forward as an actress.
Now, with her Emmy winning roles on Glee, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and numerous other programs expanding her audience even further, she is, among other projects, doing what she loves most: group singing, with her tours A Swinging’ Little Christmas with Tim Davis and Kate Flannery, and Two Lost Souls, her duo show with Kate.
Antonio Adolfo
Brazilian composer/pianist Antonio Adolfo honors the great Antonio Carlos Jobim on his latest CD, Jobim Forever. Jobim’s music launched the international bossa nova craze and won multiple Grammys in 1965 with the release of Getz/Gilberto, one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time. Antonio Aldolfo’s own compositions have been recorded by Sergio Mendes, Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick and many others, so focusing this CD on another composer, and one of his favorites, was a labor of love.
I talked with Adolfo from his home in Florida shortly after he returned from Rio de Janeiro, where he keeps a second home and heads a music school.
Georgia Mancio
In a time that celebrates the extreme, acrobatic singing of American Idle style contestants, British vocalist Georgia Mancio is unusual. Her poetic, subtle approach to delivering a song has garnered international fans and multiple awards, most recently Best Vocalist in the 2021 Parliamentary Jazz Awards.
Georgia pairs her singing and lyric writing talents with another soulful musician, multi-Grammy winning pianist/composer Alan Broadbent on their new CD, Quiet Is The Star. The songs from this CD and earlier work is collected in their recently published book, The Songs of Alan Broadbent and Georgia Mancio, featuring all of their 33 originals, co-written between 2014 and 2020. Georgia talked to me from her home in London in August 2021.
Edmar Castaneda
Colombian-born harpist Edmar Castaneda feels his unique musical talent is a gift from God, a gift with the purpose to worship God and bring his presence and unconditional love to everyone.
Edmar took up the harp as a teenager to play Columbian traditional music and later combined it with the jazz he discovered when he moved to NYC at fifteen. Since then, he has collaborated with an impressive variety of top musicians from his early mentor, Paquito D’Rivera to John Scofield, John Patitucci, Marcus Miller and Sting.
We discuss Edmar’s new CD Family which celebrates his deep spiritual life and the importance of family, his own and the world as a unified family, with both having added significance during the pandemic.
Maria Muldaur
Vocalist Maria Muldaur may be best known for her 1974 hit “Midnight at the Oasis” but it’s her long career and forty-three recordings that have continued to delight her fans with Maria’s unique approach to blues, roots and jug band music.
Maria’s mother pushed her toward classical music but when her grandmother played her some Western Swing, at the tender age of five, there was no looking back. Maria’s latest CD, Let’s Get Happy Together, is a collection of lesser-known musical gems recorded with the New Orleans band, Tuba Skinny. The liner notes include the source material for each song on the CD, which Maria hopes will entice her fans to explore the music further, a journey Maria is just as enthusiastic about today as she was when she heard that first Hank Williams record as a child.
Freda Payne
Vocalist Freda Payne is best known for her 1970s R&B hit, “Band of Gold,” but it’s her jazz roots she celebrates on her new CD “Let There Be Love, a collection of duets with Kurt Elling, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Johnny Mathis and Kenny Lattimore.
Payne studied acting, dancing and voice throughout her young life and started performing professionally as a teen, going on to work with Pearl Baily, Quincy Jones, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton and many other jazz greats.
Motown producer Barry Gordy came calling but Freda’s protective and business-savvy mother thought Freda’s career would be better served elsewhere, after questioning Gordy and realizing the control and money Freda would give up by signing with him.
Freda has toured with Broadway shows, done film and television and while she loves it all, it’s jazz that has the deepest place in her heart.
Glenn Close and Ted Nash
On the new CD Transformation: Personal Stories of Change, Acceptance and Evolution, Glenn Close joins forces with composer Ted Nash and members of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on a series of pieces that integrate spoken word segments selected by Close, with compositions by Nash. This is the second collaboration for Glenn Close and Ted Nash, with this one being especially personal, as the spoken segments range from Ted Hughes’s Tales From Ovid,” one of Glenn’s favorites, to a letter in which Ted Nash’s son comes out as transgender. Each piece focuses on change being positive, an attitude Ted Nash and Glenn Close share and encourage others to embrace.
Jason Marsalis
Drummer and vibraphonist, Jason Marsalis is a proud New Orleans native and youngest sibling in the celebrated musical Marsalis family. Jason almost vibrates with enthusiasm when he talks about music and conversationally shoots off in various directions when expressing how it connects to politics, culture and the world at large.
Jason and I recorded our conversation in March 2021 and it was obvious that even with the music business being hobbled by the pandemic, Jason was not sitting still. He’s been doing live streams solo, and with his New Orleans Groovemasters, with fellow New Orleans percussionists Herlin Riley and Shannon Powell, and more recently, he’s charged into TikTok bringing jazz to a platform not particularly known for embracing that art form.
A conversation with Jason is an adventure and this one was filled with ringing phones, barking dogs and people at the door. I felt like I was in Jason’s New Orleans, where anything can happen, and it usually does.
Mandy Barnett
Nashville vocalist, Mandy Barnett first gained national prominence as the original star of the musical Always Patsy Cline at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium. While her Country singing has been much celebrated, Mandy has a soft spot for the Great American Songbook and always includes a standard or two in her concert performances.
Mandy celebrates her love for this repertoire on her most recent CD, Every Star Above, which was inspired by Billie Holiday’s 1958 Lady in Satin album. Every Star Above was a special project on multiple levels. Mandy was introduced to Lady In Satin earlier in her life from a friend who thought it would inspire her—it did—and now, years later, Every Star Above is the result. Additionally, multi-Grammy winner Sammy Nestico did the arrangements. Sammy composed, conducted and arranged for TV and film and many of the greatest musicians in the business, including Barbra Streisand, Count Basie and Frank Sinatra. This was Sammy’s last project before he passed away earlier this year, a month before his 97th birthday.
MAURY BAKER
Percussionist Maury Baker loves all kinds of music and his wide-ranging career reflects it. He’s played with everyone from Janis Joplin and Frank Zappa to Sonny Rollins and Chet Baker. Maury feels that each of his musical directions influences and refreshes the other and his latest project, Baker’s Brew, epitomizes that. This double CD set with what he calls “new jazz works” and “new electronic works” is based on total improvisation with Maury’s longtime bandmates, Carl Royce, Daniel Coffeng and Jim Goetsch.
Hailey Brinnel
Vocalist/trombonist/educator, Hailey Brinnel grew up surrounded by the joyous energy of swing music and did her first gigs playing this music she loves at the tender age of twelve, singing and playing drums with her piano-playing father Dave. At twenty-five, Hailey is part of an impressive group of younger musicians already experienced in international touring and collaborations with big name musicians. She is also a 2021 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition finalist.
Hailey’s latest CD, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles, features familiar standards and some, like the title track, that are seldom recorded these days. We discuss the new CD, women in jazz and how music business is taught (or not taught) in universities today.
Veronica Swift
Vocalist, Veronica Swift was surrounded by some of the greatest musicians in jazz growing up, including her parents, pianist Hod O’Brien and, vocalist Stephanie Nakasian. Veronica’s influences range from this early exposure to jazz to the Fred Astaire movies she loved as a kid to classic rock. Her CD, This Bitter Earth challenges us to think about the times we’re in, how we view ourselves and others and how we take responsibility for it all.
Veronica is not only a skilled musician, she is a thoughtful one, who uses her music to entertain, provoke and enlighten the listener, at least the ones who are paying attention. We recorded this conversation in February 2021.
ANAÏS RENO
Seventeen-year-old vocalist, Anaïs Reno has always felt a bit different from her fellow humans. While she has won multiple musical awards and scholarships and has been performing since she was ten, Anaïs is not your typical exuberant teen but rather, one who is attracted to the darker side of things, a singer who has to remind herself not to include too many ballads in her sets.
Another outsider, Billy Strayhorn, started writing his much-celebrated composition “Lush Life” when he was just eighteen, so it seems fitting that Anaïs connects so deeply with Strayhorn, whom she celebrates along with another favorite, Duke Ellington, on her debut CD, Lovesome Thing, which she recorded in 2020, in the thick of the lockdown experience.
Ani DiFranco
Singer/songwriter/activist, Ani DiFranco feels her songs reflect the connection of her personal life with what’s going on in the world around her. As Ani was coming out of years of dealing with marital problems, she saw the same problems throughout the country, people suffering from a breakdown of communication, loss of empathy and connection.
Her latest CD, Revolutionary Love, addresses these issues and challenges the listener--as she puts it--to find it within ourselves to stay curious about our opponents, instead of shutting down.
Ani has collaborated with everyone from Maceo Parker to Prince and is also a passionate jazz fan. She brings all these influences together in Revolutionary Love, as well as her appealing to our better selves.
Willie Nelson
Musician, singer/songwriter/actor, activist, Willie Nelson is, and always has been a busy, passionate man. While he is much celebrated for his Country Music, he loves and continues to be influenced by the Great American Standards he heard growing up and the jazz musicians he admires. His CD, That’s Life, celebrates his favorite singer, Frank Sinatra, who like Willie, was known for his soulful phrasing and deep connection to the heart. Willie Nelson talked to me from his home in Austin, Texas about his admiration for Sinatra, his memoir, written with his sister Bobbie and how his positive attitude and faith have kept him going forward all these years with optimism.
Willie Nelson and I recorded this conversation in March 2021.
Jeff Gold
Grammy-winning music historian, archivist and author, Jeff Gold says collecting is an illness, a condition he’s enjoyed with zeal since he was eight years old. His latest book, Sittin’ In capitalizes on his passion for gathering by featuring his collection of photographs taken in jazz clubs across America in the 1940s and ‘50s of musicians and those who love them. While there is plenty of documentation of jazz greats, Sittin In features candid photos of the audiences who came to hear them and wonderful shots of musicians listening to musicians. The result is a fresh view of the jazz scene of the time and the culture that surrounded it.