Just like we did after the 2016 and 2020 elections, I spoke with my dad Ben Sidran this week about the latest presidential election.

True to form, it is a conversation that appears to be about one thing but is in fact about many things. What begins as a somber acknowledgement of the election results turns quickly to a sprawling discussion of everything from Will and Ariel Durant’s massive 11-volume work, The Story of Civilization, Seinfeld, The First Council of Nicaea, Irving Berlin, Jack Kerouac, what separates humankind from the rest of the animal kingdom, bottle service at "the party club", the importance of beauty, and what it means to “chop your wood and carry water.”

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Andrew Bird has been on a quest for meaning in sound since childhood, starting with the violin at age four and earning a degree in violin performance from Northwestern University. His journey has taken him from classical and folk roots to the vibrant Chicago swing scene, to creative isolation in a barn in Western Illinois, and eventually to become a genre defying artist and composer with a unique voice.

Andrew’s lyrics are both confessional and impressionist, often leading listeners on a journey through evocative imagery. With just a looping pedal, he reinvented his sound, blending classical, folk, and indie rock and crafted a distinct sonic landscape that defines his music today.

After nearly three decades and 20 albums, Andrew continues to evolve. His latest release, Sunday Morning Put On, pays tribute to jazz standards while maintaining his signature sound. He describes it as a “sabbatical” project, giving him space to reflect and create without pressure.

Just recently, he released Cunningham Bird, a tribute to the classic Buckingham Nicks album. Here he shares insights about his early days, the isolation that shaped him, songwriting as a form of “speaking in tongues”and the lessons learned from performing standards.

Here he talks about his early days in Chicago, the journey that led him into isolation, discovering his sound, songwriting as a form of “speaking in tongues”, what it means to be living his life in song form, and what he learned from singing standards.

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Pianist Aaron Goldberg on 20 years of organizing jazz fundraisers for presidential campaigns (this year's was Jazz for Kamala), how he thinks about the potential of music to provoke personal transformation and political action, his own relationship with activism and progressive politics, concert curation, Israel and Gaza.

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Family music artist Lucy Kalantari on the power of intention, why gardening is her favorite metaphor for living a creative life, staying curious, parenthood, her new record, and the Grammys.

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Riley Mulherkar grew up in Seattle, the Pacific Northwest enclave that has been home to so many musical innovators over the years. He went to Garfield High School, a school that has fostered countless talents going all the way back to Quincy Jones who was himself a young trumpet player at the school in the 1940s. Riley was just eight years-old when he began seeing the legendary Garfield High School big-band play free gigs in his Seattle neighborhood; it’s one of the reasons he picked up the trumpet. He was clearly meant to play the instrument.

By the time he got to Juilliard in New York, Riley had shown up on the radar of Wynton Marsalis, who became a mentor. If this story is sounding familiar, it’s because it resembles the experience of so many musicians of his generation who have similar origin stories.

On a deeper level, it’s a story that echoes through the history of jazz - young musicians who are compelled to move to New York after only a small handful of interactions with their heroes.

Riley Mulherkar is very much a man of his moment, and also mindful of those echoes from the past. His new album - his first under his own name and called, simply, Riley is awash in the echoes of history but also boldly embraces contemporary sounds and textures, it reframes classic material that was influential to him and positions his original compositions in that continuum.

The album was a long time in the making. It’s the result of years of experimentation and reflection, and that patience is palpable in the music. Above all, the feeling of the record is totally compelling. And feeling was at the heart of the project all along. He says he was not interested in making something that sounded like an old record, but rather that felt the way he feels when he listens to his heroes, something he describes as “hyperrealism”.

We spoke earlier this year about how the Riley album came together - he worked closely with pianist Chris Pattishall and guitarist/producer Rafiq Bhatia - his diverse career as a collaborator, music presenter, composer, and now solo artist, and how thinking of jazz as a family tree helped him to find his place in the music.

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Jesse Harris belongs to a generation of New York singer songwriters who came of age in the late nineties. He has made over 20 solo albums that walk the line between folk, jazz, pop, Brazilian and art rock. He’s also a much sought after co writer and collaborator who has written songs for and or with many others like Madeleine Peyroux, Melody Gardot, Lana del Rey, and most famously Norah Jones.

Jesse was already well into his career when he met a young Norah Jones on a road trip through Texas and played his songs for her. He had already been signed and dropped from a major label with his band Once Blue (a project he started with Rebecca Martin, and which also featured musicians Ben Street, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Kenny Wollesen), and had already been exploring a space in his songwriting that played in between jazz and pop.

But that chance encounter with Jones, who was still a student at the University of North Texas at the time, was the one that would change the course of Jesse’s career. They stayed in touch and began working together when Jones eventually moved to New York.

Her debut album, 2002’s Come Away With Me contained five of his songs including the now ubiquitous standard “Don’t Know Why”. He also played guitar on the record. Their partnership has endured over the years - Jones and Harris have written together on and off ever since then - but it was that first record that arguably redirected the sound of certain strains of popular music and jazz for a generation.

The success of Come Away With Me also opened new doors for Harris as a solo artist and a composer. Ultimately he started a label (Secret Sun, named after a solo album of the same name) to put out the projects that he produced for himself and others, and recently has been dividing his time between New York and Paris. Jesse is a relentlessly prolific songwriter, someone for whom songs are like air and water; they are simply a fact of life.

Here he talks about Paper Flower, his most recent album recorded in Paris with American and French musicians, his approach to songwriting (“writer's block is a choice”) and production, taking things as they come, confession versus craft, venturing into the unconscious, and whether it is his fate to work with female artists.

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https://www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story

Ella Rae Feingold is a guitar player, composer, orchestrator, educator and content creator.

She has spent three decades devoted to the soulful side of the electric guitar, and has worked with an impressive list of artists, including Bruno Mars, Erykah Badu and Common, The Roots, Jay-Z, Janet Jackson, Alicia Keys, Jill Scott, Queen Latifah and many more. On her Instagram and TikTok she is a rhythm ambassador, focussing on the importance of groove, pocket and feel in her playing and demonstrating various techniques and traditions in rhythm guitar.

Hearing Ella play and talk about music, it’s clear that she has thought deeply about her craft for a long time. Guitarist Charlie Hunter recently referred to her as “one of the baddest, greasiest guitar players on the planet.” (Of course in this context “bad” and “greasy” are two of the highest compliments one can pay.) And yet she is also very much a new arrival.

Feingold has been hiding in plain sight for years - both figuratively and literally - standing in the shadow of giants, just out of the spotlight and not attracting too much attention. This may have been partly a musical disposition, but it was also a function of feeling that she was simply in the wrong body. Ella is transgender, and after transitioning several years ago, she began to share more of herself online including regular musical dispatches which have exposed her to a steadily growing audience of students, fans, followers and collaborators.

She describes the process of transitioning as less an act of creation and more one of excavation. We spoke recently about her personal and musical rebirth, the importance of rhythm - she tells me “I don’t want to impress anyone I just want to make people feel good,” discovering inverted tuning, orchestration, transfobia, and why she hopes to be the Mister Rogers of funk guitar.

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www.wbgo.org/podcast/the-third-story

Paula Cole on her early success, dreaming big, her life and career, the power of “the beginner’s mind”, the distinction between being an artist and an entertainer, the feeling of being pregnant with song, speaking for those who cannot speak, navigating a life in the music business, learning from young people, and her new album, Lo.

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