Part personal story, part philosophical inquiry, and part behind-the-scenes look at how creative work actually gets made, Leo Sidran chronicles the process of preparing a gig with his father.
When I arrived in Palm Springs last month, a few days before the concert-lecture I would play with my father, Ben Sidran, I found him surrounded by months of research notes, trying to wrestle his ideas into something coherent.
The performance was part of the Palm Springs International Jazz Festival during the city’s annual Modernism Week, and it grew out of an earlier program we presented at Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin. What began as a playful idea about the relationship between architecture and music gradually expanded into a deeper exploration of the natural structures that shape both.
Along the way we found ourselves diving into the harmonic series, overtones, Fibonacci patterns, and the physics of vibration, asking how these natural phenomena influence the way we hear rhythm, harmony, and beauty.
Drawing on conversations with musicians like Gil Goldstein, Howard Levy, and Jacob Collier, the episode becomes part personal story, part philosophical inquiry, and part behind-the-scenes look at how creative work actually gets made.
