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M U S I C I A N S S P E A K |
| Joseph Celli Podcast Series |
| Jason Kao Hwang - Episode 34 (9/30/24) |
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Joseph Celli Interviews Jason Kao Hwang
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| Violinist, composer and improvisor Jason Kao Hwang discusses his early training and eventual emergence in New York’s improv loft scene. Jason discusses the Asian American music movement, his mentors, and the use of the electric violin. During the program we listen to several of his compositions including Blood and Sing House as well as an improvisation with Karl Berger and his recent solo pizzicato violin release Silhouettes (2024). Jason has worked as a violinist with innumerable new music creators including Anthony Braxton, William Parker, Henry Threadgill, Tomeka Reid, Wadada Leo Smith, Joëlle Léandre and many others. He has received support from Chamber Music America, Rockefeller Foundation, US Artists International and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and others. |
Tom Hull's 2019 Downbeat Critics Poll choice: Jason Kao Hwang, Violinist of the Year
‘Jason Kao Hwang’s …Glass Shadows creates music that is taut, delicate and highly original,’
The New York Times
Jason Kao Hwang in the top five of the Downbeat Critics Poll 2024
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| Marilyn Crispell - Episode 33 (8/19/24) |
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Joseph Celli Interviews Marilyn Crispell
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| Free-jazz pianist/composer Marilyn Crispell discusses her early training in classical music and the profound impact of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme that led to an eventual transition into free-jazz. During the interview we hear music from three periods of her over fifty year career including Coltrane’s Dear Lord, a trio with Gary Peacock and Paul Motion and finally the latest recording Spi-raling Horn. Marilyn also discusses her esteemed NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship. She has performed and recorded extensively with Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry, the Anthony Braxton Quartet, Reggie Workman, Paul Motion, Oliver Lake, Irene Schweizer, Gerry Hemingway, and many other leading improvisors of the past five decades. |
Kennedy Center Artistic Director for Jazz Jason Moran remarked on Crispell’s incredible musicianship. “Following her playing all these years, watching also then all this kind of incredible lyricism flow from her hands, it’s easy to say that she’s a storyteller, but she also makes peace with the instrument. That’s the kind of piano player she is.”
“Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano. She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz” The New York Times
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| James Brandon Lewis - Episode 32 (7/23/24) |
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Joseph Celli Interviews James Brandon Lewis
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| Rising Star Tenor Saxophonist in the Downbeat International Critics Poll (2021) James Brandon Lewis discusses his training, his many projects and bands, and his various recordings. We also listen to cuts from the recording Eye of I, his quartet release Transfiguration (2024) and the energetic The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis (2024). |
Saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins, one of Lewis’s greatest influences, responded to a recording by James by saying, “When I listen to you, I listen to Buddha, I listen to Confucius….I listen to the deeper meaning of life. You are keeping the world in balance.”
“James Brandon Lewis’ solos are like a jumbo jet – you need to give them plenty of runway space to take off and land.” (Marc Ribot)
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| Joe Lovano - Episode 31 (4/23/24) |
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Joseph Celli Interviews Joe Lovano
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| Grammy Award winning composer, saxophonist and producer Joe Lovano has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the greatest musicians in jazz history,’. During the interview we discuss his early years and the strong musical influence of his family, his over thirty recordings and the expansive range of ensembles he has led and composed for. We hear music from Flights of Fancy, the US Five Band, and his recent Trio Tapestry release with Marilyn Crispell and drummer Carmen Castaldi. Joe has created an extensive body of work for his own ensembles including strings, woodwinds, his horn-rich Nonet, the Classic Quartet, Trio Tapestry and more. |
“After 30 albums as a leader and at least 25 years in the spotlight, it’s clear Joe Lovano is more than a dominant figure in jazz. He’s jazz’s answer to George Clooney or Jeff Bridges, a vibrant player who delivers an award-worthy performance every time out.” Wall St Journal
“Organic and basic, intense and casual…Mr. Lovano’s performance is a knockout…” The New York Times
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| Angelica Sanchez - Episode 30 (3/19/24) |
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Joseph Celli Interviews Angelica Sanchez
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| Composer, pianist, improviser, band leader and educator Angelica Sanchez discusses her early training in Arizona, her family support, development and current projects. She talks about her recording with Marilyn Crispell and her release Nighttime Creatures. During the program we have the opportunity of hearing her duo with Marilyn, an excerpt from the acclaimed Sparkle Beings release as well as music from Nighttime Creatures. |
“The stalwart avant-garde pianist…..letting melodies explode in her hand and locking in — closely but not too tightly — with (Billy) Hart’s drums.” The New York Times (Sparkle Beings, Best Jazz Albums of 2022)
“(Sanchez’s) the band eases from open abstraction to simmering incantation so gracefully that the dividing line effectively disappears.” Nate Chinen, The New York Times
Angelica Sanchez: Nighttime Creatures (Downbeat Best Albums of 2023 – Masterpieces)
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| Tomeka Reid - Episode 29 (2/20/24) |
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Joseph Celli Interviews Tomeka Reid
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| Tomeka Reid, cellist, composer and improviser discusses her music, her participation in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the creation of the Chicago Jazz String Summit, and her recent MacArthur Genius Award. She talks about her classical cello training and her evolution into composition and improvisation and the sense of community that she strives for when making music. We listen to several of her performances with her quartet that includes Mary Halvorson (guitar), Jason Roebke (bass) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). |
The New York Times wrote, “The cellist Tomeka Reid has been one of the great energies of the past year in jazz: a melodic improviser with a natural, flowing sense of song and an experimenter who can create heat and grit with the texture of sound.”
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| Dennis Báthory-Kitsz - Episode 28 (10/25/23) |
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| Joseph Celli Interviews Dennis Báthory-Kitsz |
| An exuberant and lively discussion with composer Dennis Báthory-Kitsz about his pseudonyms, early musical development, Grundig radios, the dawn of Dennis’s homemade computer music, creation of Kalvos and Damien’s New Music Bazaar, life in Vermont, composer Clarence Barlow, and his over 300 commissions and 1,000 compositions. Dennis has received numerous awards and grants including ASCAP – Deems Taylor Internet Award, American Music Center Composer Assistance Program, and National Endowment for the Arts grant. |
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| David Murray - Episode 27 (7/19/23) |
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Joseph Celli Interviews David Murray
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| The Washington Post has written about saxophonist/bass clarinetist extraordinaire and band leader David Murray, ‘…a legend…he took the jazz world by storm.’ The Village Voice declared David ‘musician of the decade’. During the interview David discusses his early church years, his work with the Gwo-Ka Masters and the Grateful Dead. He has released over 150 recordings with an extraordinaire range of musicians including Pharoah Sanders, World Sax Quartet, Lester Bowie, Andrew Cyrille, Jack DeJohnette, James Blood Ulmer, Don Pullen, Milford Graves and countless others. |
David discusses Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane, PaPa Joe Jones, the World Saxophone Quartet as well as his current band featuring Marta Sanchez. During the interview we hear music from several of his releases including his most recent release Brave New World Trio.
Cecil Taylor compared Murray to his greatest predecessors who had a signature sound when he said, “You stick your ear in the door, you know it’s David!”
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| William Parker - Episode 26 (4/13/23) |
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| Joseph Celli Interviews William Parker |
| William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, author and educator from New York City. William has recorded over 150 albums, published six books and taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists. He has been called “one of the most inventive bassist/leaders since Mingus” and “the creative heir to Jimmy Garrison and Paul Chambers…” The Village Voice called him, “…the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time.” |
| During the interview Parker discusses his early years in the Bronx, training with some of the masters of the bass, his 12-years with Cecil Taylor and his universal beliefs in the power of music. In addition to Cecil Taylor he has performed with creative musicians Milford Graves, Don Cherry, Bill Dixon, Peter Brotzmann, Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Rashied Ali, Charles Gayle, Jimmy Lyons, Billy Bang, Daniel Carter, Cooper Moore, David S. Ware, Sonny Murray, Jemeel Moondoc, Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Oliver Lake, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Enrico Rava, Grachan Moncur III, The Art Ensemble Of Chicago among others. A solo bass performance, a trio with Andrew Cyrille and Enrico Rava and his quartet are featured during the interview.
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| Malcolm Goldstein - Episode 25 (6/16/22) |
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| Joseph Celli Interviews Malcolm Goldstein |
Interview – Part I
Malcolm Goldstein has been considered a seminal voice in the downtown music scene of the ‘60’s, ‘70’s and ‘80’s with people like Philip Corner, James Tenney, Elaine Summers, Carolee Schneemann and others. His exploration of sound textures and expanded musical possibilities has resulted in the New York Times writing, “The program opened with one of his “Soundings” improvisations: Flutterings, whispers, squeaks, scrapes, trills and long brush strokes made for an intriguing aural collage, with sounds ranging from delicate and ethereal to harsh and grating.”
Malcolm has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts/Inter-Arts (USA), the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts, and Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec, as well as numerous commissions from Studio Akustische Kunst/WDR Cologne. In 1994 he received the Prix International award for his acoustic art/radio work "between (two) spaces".
During Part I of the interview we hear music from his Sound The Fragility of Line and Broken Canons from Soweto Stomp. |
Interview – Part 2
In Part 2 we hear a recording of Summer from The Seasons: Vermont, John Cage’s Eight Whiskus, and haiku sounding from the new release entitled, because a circle is not enough: music for bowed string instruments (New World Records, 80835-2). Malcolm continues the discussion of his work as a violinist, improviser and composer and how life in Vermont helped to inform his work.
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| Miguel Zenon - Episode 24 (9/1/22) |
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| Joseph Celli Interviews Miguel Zenon |
Since the original interview with Miguel (9/8/19) he has released a number of new discs and expanded his work as a composer, educator and saxophonist. We discuss his new release Musica de Las Americas about which he says, “This music is inspired by the history of the American continent: not only before European colonization, but also by what’s happened since – cause and effect.” The new album pays tribute to the diverse cultures of the Americas while also challenging modern assumptions about who and what ‘America’ is.
Miguel is a multiple Grammy nominee and Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow as well as receiving commissions by SFJAZZ Collective, NY State Council for the Arts, Chamber Music America, Peak Performances and many others. He also created Caravana Cultural to present free-of-charge jazz concerts in rural areas of Puerto Rico.
“This young musician and composer is at once reestablishing the artistic, cultural and social tradition of jazz while creating an entirely new jazz language for the 21st century.” MacArthur Foundation
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| Mary Halvorson - Episode 23 (6/9/22) |
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| Joseph Celli Interviews Mary Halvorson |
Mary Halvorson discusses her two new releases Amaryllis and Belladonna that she composed during the Covid lock-down. The recordings showcase her string quartet writing deftly interpreted by The Mivos Quartet, alongside a brand new sextet featuring Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), Jacob Garchik (trombone), Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). The twin debuts for Nonesuch Records, released in May 2022, were called “...new landmarks in Halvorson’s already inimitable discography” in a five star review by The Guardian.
During the interview she gives us insights to her background, her guitar inspiration with Jimi Hendrix and studies with Anthony Braxton. Mary has been described as “a singular talent” (Lloyd Sachs, JazzTimes), ”NYC’s least-predictable improviser” (Howard Mandel, City Arts), “one of the most exciting and original guitarists in jazz—or otherwise” (Steve Dollar, Wall Street Journal), and “one of today’s most formidable bandleaders” (Francis Davis, Village Voice). In 2019 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
“An unflinching original who has revealed new possibilities within the music.” New York Times |
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| Bill Frisell - Episode 22 (5/19/22) |
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| Joseph Celli Interviews Bill Frisell |
Guitarist/composer Bill Frisell discusses his post Covid activity, his memories of the ‘olden days’, touring, and the extraordinary energy that he gets from the music. Bill discusses the ‘magic’ of the music taking over and the instinctive sonic relationship within his trio, his early years in Denver, the music he’s listening to now, Louis Armstrong, and others. Bill Frisell’s career as a guitarist and composer has spanned more than 40 years and many celebrated recordings. His recorded catalog has been cited by Downbeat as, “the best recorded output of the decade.” Bill appears on over 150 recordings as leader or collaborator as well as receiving Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Jazz Album and for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. Bill is the subject of a new documentary film entitled, Bill Frisell: A Portrait, which examines his creative process in depth.
“Frisell has had a lot of practice putting high concept into a humble package. Long hailed as one of the most distinctive and original improving guitarists of our time, he has also earned a reputation for teasing out thematic connections with his music…There’s a reason that Jazz at Lincoln Center had him program a series called Roots of Americana.” New York Times
“Bill Frisell plays the guitar like Miles Davis played the trumpet: in the hands of such radical thinkers, their instruments simply become different animals. And, like Davis, Frisell loves to have a lot of legroom when he improvises – the space that terrifies others quickens his blood.” The New Yorker |
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