This week's schedule:
8/19 Rickie Lee Jones
8/20 Edmar Castañeda
8/21 David Bloom
8/22 Seth MacFarlane
8/23 Hannah Gill
Monday, August 19
Singer/songwriter Rickie Lee Jones has been hard to pin down-- stylistically, geographically and in most other ways--as her fascinating memoir, Last Chance Texaco, makes clear. While Time Magazine dubbed Rickie the “Duchess of Coolsville” this is a woman who has stormed through a life of challenges that would have felled most people, making her cool mien even more impressive.
Tuesday, August 20
Colombian-born harpist Edmar Castañeda 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 revisit my 2021 conversation with Edmar, right before the release of his CD Family. Edmar celebrates his deep spiritual life with this recording and the importance of family, his own and the world as a unified family.
Wednesday, August 21
David Bloom is a man of many talents: Guitarist, flautist, painter, writer, and educator. Bloom feels his interest in each feeds his enthusiasm for it all and allows his focus—putting beauty into the world—to flourish. His CD collaboration with arranger Cliff Colnot, Shadow of a Soul, celebrates those individuals Bloom has met over the years who, in his words, have an unusual level of spirituality, imagination, hipness, heart and individuality, what he calls a “Shadow of a Soul.” The recording honors Bloom’s reverence for these people and this way of living, taking one’s inherent gifts and developing them with passion.
Thursday, August 22
Animator/voice actor Seth MacFarlane started drawing at age 2, originated a comic strip for his local newspaper when he was 8, snagged a job at Hanna-Barbara shortly after graduating college, and by 26, his show Family Guy was on Fox. Family Guy composer Ron Jones calls MacFarlane “the Orson Wells of our time”, and his myriad talents and prolific output reinforce this assessment.
Seth and I recorded at his home in Brentwood and to my delight, Peter and Stewie dropped by and joined in the conversation!
Friday, August 23
Vocalist Hannah Gill, unlike most twenty-something jazz musicians on the scene, doesn’t have a music degree or any of the usual notions of how one pursues a jazz career. I found Hannah delightfully open to doing just about anything in show business and realistic about her goals, with none of the “I’m going to get famous and conquer the world” aspirations one expects from someone starting out, but rather, as she told me, she’d like to continue making music for the rest of her life, be able to pay her rent and go out to dinner a couple of times a month. She’s already done much more than that, having toured worldwide with Post Modern Jukebox and performed widely with her own band, Hannah Gill and the Hours.
Listen each morning on WBGO from 6 to 8 am ET.
For an archive of episodes on WBGO, visit the show’s page here.
