Leo Sidran
Host of The Third StoryLeo Sidran is a Grammy winning multi-instrumentalist musician, producer, arranger, composer, recording artist and podcast host based in Brooklyn, New York.
Raised around music and musicians, Sidran started writing songs professionally as a teenager when the Steve Miller Band recorded four of his songs for their 1993 Wide River album. Around the same time, he began performing regularly as a drummer with his father, renowned and multifaceted jazzman Ben Sidran.
Sidran’s seven solo albums have explored the space between pop music, jazz, Brazilian and singer songwriter genres. Jazz Magazine in France says “Leo Sidran makes pop music swing.” Jazz Times says of Leo, “Vocally he suggests an amalgam of his father Ben with a hint of Donald Fagen. His fluid laidback style is reminiscent of Bob Dorough. Musically and lyrically his compositions are smart, sharp, and sparklingly original.” His most recent album, The Art Of Conversation was released in 2021. El Pais in Spain called it a “hymn to empathy”.
In addition to his solo career he has produced or co-produced projects for artists around the world (often in the Latin music space) including the Oscar winning song “Al otro lado del rio” for Jorge Drexler (from the film The Motorcycle Diaries), the Latin Grammy winning Healer for Cuban singer Alex Cuba, Grammy Nominated Mis Americas for Argentine-American songwriter Kevin Johansen, and The Original for Clyde Stubblefield (James Brown's original funky drummer). Leo has produced all of Ben Sidran’s records for the last 15 years, most recently Swing State.
Leo’s music has been featured in hundreds of advertisements for the world’s biggest brands, and he has scored long form projects for outlets including ESPN 30 for 30, Discovery, IFC, Sundance, and PBS.
As a drummer, he has played and recorded with jazz luminaries including Phil Woods, Howard Levy, David Fathead Newman, Clark Terry, Dave Grusin, Rick Margitza, and many more. He tours regularly around the world with his father’s quartet and his love of jazz continues to inform much of his work.
Above all, Leo loves to connect with people, which is what led him to start his much heralded podcast The Third Story, featuring interviews with musicians, producers, songwriters, and others in the creative class of all ages about their personal stories and professional journeys. Although it is not specifically a jazz podcast, many of his guests have spent time exploring the space around improvisation and creation.
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Vocal trio Duchess is back with A Marvelous Party. They talk with Leo Sidran about their first studio album in nearly a decade. -
Tony Bennett would have turned 100 on August 3. Revisiting a 1992 conversation with WBGO's Michael Bourne, recorded just before his remarkable later-career resurgence, Bennett reflects on the songs, composers, and jazz tradition that sustained him throughout more than seventy years as one of America's great interpreters. -
Christian McBride reflects on the Montclair Jazz Festival’s accidental beginnings, Montclair’s deep jazz history, the mentors who taught him to pay it forward, and the joy of introducing new listeners to the music he loves. -
Mexican-born, Miami-raised singer-songwriter Andrea Bejar is part of a new generation of artists who built an audience online before taking the stage. Speaking with WBGO's Leo Sidran before her New York solo debut, Bejar reflects on growing up between cultures, finding meaning in lyrics, and how living between two languages has filled her songs with a sense of nostalgia and longing. -
Ruido Tovar brings together two of Latin America's most inventive musical voices for a joyful exploration of cumbia's past, present, and future. Leo Sidran speaks with Camilo Lara and Eblis Álvarez about collaboration, cultural identity, and the enduring power of tradition to reinvent itself. -
Leo Sidran and WBGO celebrate Janis Siegel on her birthday -
Ben Wikler, author of This Is the Plan, talks to Leo Sidran about humor, organizing, civic life, and the Wisconsin values that shaped his approach to democracy. A thoughtful discussion of community, political communication, and why, as Wikler says, "democracy is exhausting until you discover solidarity." -
As New York Voices prepares to retire after nearly forty years together, Darmon Meader looks back with Janis Siegel on the unlikely origins of one of jazz's defining vocal groups - and the role WBGO played from the very beginning. -
A new jazz club in New York's Financial District is part of a surprising wave of venues opening across the city. Leo Sidran visits One Flight Up, where drummer Joe Strasser and his longtime friend and business partner Mark Quinn have turned a decades-old dream into reality. -
Thirty years after Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? became one of the defining songs of the 1990s, Paula Cole reflects on writing, recording and ultimately misunderstanding the success of a song that never fit neatly into a category.
