Kenny Garrett has been playing for more than 40 years. Originally from Detroit, he joined the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the late 70s, when it was being run by Ellington’s son Mercer. He also played with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and with Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, and Freddie Hubbard. He was a member of a young lions group put together by…

I first learned about Arushi Jain three years ago, when most people who are aware of her work did. Her 2021 album Under The Lilac Sky was extremely beautiful, six tracks of droning, pulsing synth music with her vocals kind of floating in the middle like she was singing from the middle of an isolation tank. It was entirely created with a modular syn…

Rufus Reid is an extremely important but under-recognized figure in modern jazz. He’s always been someone who’s had one foot in the mainstream and one in the avant-garde — he did a lot of work with soul jazz and jazz-funk saxophonist Eddie Harris in the early 1970s, before joining Dexter Gordon’s band when Gordon made his famous US comeback after y…

Welcome back to the Burning Ambulance Podcast! To find out about upcoming episodes, as well as all things Burning Ambulance, sign up for our free weekly newsletter. It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these. In fact, the last episode was released in December of 2022. I talked then to film critic Walter Chaw about his book on the work of di…

This is not a typical episode of this podcast. Normally, as you probably know, I talk to musicians. And in 2022, we’ve specifically been talking about fusion, which means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And we’re going to get back to that subject in our next episode, when I have an interview with saxophonist Dave Liebman, wh…

I have said two things all season long. The first is that we’re going to be exploring a single topic for ten episodes, and that topic is fusion. But the second thing I’ve been saying is that what I’m talking about when I say the word fusion isn’t a style or a genre, but a state of mind. It’s not what you play, it’s how you approach music-making. In…

In previous episodes, we’ve talked about what people commonly understand as fusion, which drummer Lenny White, who appeared in episode two of this series, prefers to call jazz-rock. That’s the version that starts with Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew and Tony Williams’ Lifetime and quickly branches out with Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return To Forever and …

The latest episode of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with tuba player Bob Stewart. I have said all season long that we’re going to be exploring a single subject for ten episodes, and that subject is fusion. But as I hope has become clear over the course of the five previous episodes, during which I interviewed techno pioneer Je…

As you know if you've been listening this season, we have a single subject we’re going to be exploring across ten episodes, and that subject is fusion. Fusion means much more, I think, than just the music that most people think of when they hear the word. I’m not talking exclusively about the big-name bands from the 1970s: the Mahavishnu Orchestra,…

Episode 73 of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with pianist Cameron Graves. I have a single subject we’re going to be exploring through all ten episodes that I’m going to be presenting this season, and that subject is fusion. Fusion means much more, I think, than just the music that most people probably think of when they hear th…

This season on the Burning Ambulance Podcast, we’re going to have a single subject we’re going to be exploring through all ten episodes, and that subject is fusion. Fusion, of course, is a term that means different things to different people. When most people hear it, they probably think of bands from the 1970s like the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return…

This is the sixth year of the Burning Ambulance Podcast. This is episode 71, and I decided at the beginning of this year that it was time to change things up a little. So for all ten episodes that I’m going to be presenting this season, we’re going to have a single subject, and that subject is fusion. Lenny White played on one of the most important…

This is the Burning Ambulance podcast's sixth year, and our seventieth episode, so I decided it was time to change things up a little. This season, we’re going to have a single subject we’re going to be exploring through all ten episodes that I’m going to be presenting, and that theme is fusion. Fusion is a very charged term. When most people hear …

Billy Harper has had a pretty incredible career. He was a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1968. He played with Max Roach. He was part of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band and the Gil Evans big band, and because of those connections he got to play on a Louis Armstrong album. He was on Lee Morgan’s final studio album, recorded in 1971. And …

Andrew Cyrille is the last man standing from the first wave of free jazz drummers. He and Milford Graves, Sunny Murray, and Rashied Ali really revolutionized jazz rhythm in their playing with Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane and other musicians in the early to mid ’60s. Their influence was huge, and each of them brought a different perspec…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon • Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Don Byron is originally from the Bronx, and he was kind of a fixture on the Downtown music scene in the late '80s and early '90s. His first album as a leader, Tuskegee Experiments, came out almost 30 years ago, in 1992; it featured a variety of musicians, including gu…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon • Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter This is an episode I have been hoping to present since this podcast began. I’ve been requesting interviews with Braxton for years, but never gotten the okay until this month. And you know what? In retrospect, I’m glad it took as long as it did. You know the saying “Wh…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon • Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter I’ve been listening to Wadada Leo Smith for a long time; I own a lot of his albums, but his catalog is really large. I interviewed him for a cover story in The Wire in 2009, which he actually remembered — that surprised me a little. He was an early member of the AACM,…

Episode 63 of the Burning Ambulance Podcast features an interview with Seth Rosner and Yulun Wang of Pi Recordings. As you probably know by now, a typical episode is based around an interview with an artist. But Pi Recordings is such an important label when it comes to the kind of music covered on Burning Ambulance – I mean, Roscoe Mitchell, who’s …

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Joe Chambers is a legend. He made his name in the early 1960s, playing on a string of some of the most adventurous Blue Note Records sessions of the time. He can be heard on albums like Bobby Hutcherson's Dialogue, Wayne Shorter's The All Seeing Eye, Andrew Hill's Compu…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Muriel Grossmann is a saxophonist originally from Vienna, Austria, but now she lives in Spain, and she puts out roughly an album a year entirely independently, though she licenses them to a label for the vinyl editions, which she talks about in this interview. She was v…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter This episode features an interview with saxophonist Ivo Perelman, which is important because he's one of the artists on Polarity, a CD which I'll be putting out through my new label, Burning Ambulance Music, in February 2021. It's a duo album with trumpeter Nate Wooley,…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter I first heard Tim Berne on a John Zorn album – Spy Vs. Spy, from 1989, where the two of them, plus Mark Dresser on bass and Joey Baron and Michael Vatcher on drums, play 17 Ornette Coleman tunes in 40 minutes. It’s one of the most intense records you’ll ever hear in you…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Ambrose Akinmusire is a really fascinating trumpet player. He’s made five studio albums and one live album, all but one of them for Blue Note. He’s also recorded with Walter Smith III, with Archie Shepp, with Mary Halvorson as part of her group Code Girl, with Tarbaby, …

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Christian McBride is one of the most widely recorded bass players in jazz. He’s been on more than 300 albums as a sideman, and has won six Grammys. This year alone, he’s put out three major projects. In February, he released The Movement Revisited, a large-scale project…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Episode 57 of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with producer Kevin Richard Martin. I’ve been a fan of Martin’s for almost 30 years. The first thing I heard by him was 1992's Possession, by his band God, which also featured Godflesh's Justin Broadrick …

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Episode 56 of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with saxophonist Alan Braufman. Braufman is about to release his first album under his own name in 45 years. He made his debut in 1975 with Valley of Search, recorded at his loft at 501 Canal Street in Ne…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Episode 55 of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with saxophonist Wayne Escoffery. Fair warning: there are some sound dropouts here and there on this episode, because I got a new iPhone and consequently had to try out a different method of recording. So…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter The 54th episode of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with trombonist Ryan Porter. If you’ve seen Kamasi Washington live, you’ve seen Ryan Porter — he’s the trombonist standing directly to Kamasi’s left onstage. They’ve been friends since they were kid…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter The 53rd episode of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with singer-songwriter and guitarist Dave Alvin, and is sponsored by Harry's men's grooming products. If you’re listening to this, you can get a Harry’s trial set at harrys.com/burning. You’ll get a…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter The 52nd episode of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, and is sponsored by Harry's men's grooming products. If you’re listening to this, you can get a Harry’s trial set at harrys.com/burning. You’ll get a weighted e…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter The 51st episode of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with violinist Isabelle Faust. Isabelle Faust is from Germany, and has been playing the violin since she was a child. If you've been listening for a while, you know that the overwhelming majority of…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter The 50th episode of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with drummer/beatmaker/producer Kassa Overall. Overall is a really exciting musician. He’s much more than just a drummer, although he’s a monster behind the kit; he was a member of pianist Geri Alle…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter It's true: After a three-month hiatus, the Burning Ambulance podcast is back, with an interview with legendary saxophonist Peter Brötzmann! Brötzmann first emerged onto the global scene in the late '60s — he released his first album, For Adolphe Sax, named for the inven…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Nduduzo Makhathini is one of the most important musicians in South African jazz. He's made eight albums as a leader so far, and is also a member of the group Shabaka and the Ancestors, led by Shabaka Hutchings, who was on this podcast way back in January 2018. Makhathin…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Kris Davis is a really fascinating pianist who's been on the New York music scene for almost 20 years. She’s made a number of excellent albums as a leader and as a solo artist, and is also a member of groups like Paradoxical Frog with Ingrid Laubrock and Tyshawn Sorey, …

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Chris Lightcap is is a guy I’ve been aware of since the start of his career in the late 90s, when he was playing with Whit Dickey’s trio on the album Transonic. He was also a member of guitarist Joe Morris’s quartet with Mat Maneri on viola and Jerome Deupree on drums a…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter George Cables is one of those musicians that serious jazz fans love, but who’s not that well known to the broader public. He’s never crossed over in any way, because he’s never really tried to. He’s jazz to the core of his bones, and he’s had an incredible career both a…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Singer Bernard Fowler has been around for close to 40 years. In addition to fronting his own bands Sirrius and Nicklebag, he's been the frontman for Tackhead and performed on an unbelievable number of records, many of them as a member of Bill Laswell's company of musici…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma is a legend. He was barely out of high school when guitarist Reggie Lucas recommended him to Ornette Coleman, who hired him for what would become Prime Time. He stayed with Coleman for a dozen years, working with James "Blood" Ulmer and record…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Drummer Allison Miller is a well-known figure on the New York jazz scene, but she's also had a second career backing big-name folk and rock artists like Natalie Merchant, Ani DiFranco, and Brandi Carlile. She released an album with her band Boom Tic Boom early this year…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Drummer Whit Dickey is a well-known figure on the New York free jazz scene; he came to prominence as a member of the Matthew Shipp Trio and the David S. Ware Quartet in the 1990s, but has made multiple albums as a leader and collaborated with a lot of other musicians, i…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Cellist Saeunn Thorsteinsdóttir (pronounced "Sigh-oon") was born in Iceland, and came to the US as a child; she received a Bachelor of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music, a Master of Music from the Juilliard School and a Doctorate of Musical Arts from SUNY Ston…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Saxophonist Melissa Aldana was born in Santiago, Chile, and came to the US to study at Berklee; in 2013, after having already made two albums for Greg Osby's Inner Circle label, she was the first South American musician and the first female musician to win the Theloniou…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Drummer Herlin Riley is from New Orleans, and is a major keeper of the flame when it comes to that city's jazz tradition. He played with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis's band and with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra for close to 20 years, and was with pianist Ahmad Jama…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Get the Burning Ambulance email newsletter Writer John Corbett is from Chicago, and has been spreading the word about obscure and underground music for decades. He's a writer, a critic, a record collector, a presenter of live music, and a producer of both reissues and new albums in the areas of free and avant-ga…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Vocalist Dwight Trible is originally from Cincinnati, but he's lived in Los Angeles since the early 1970s. He's recorded several albums on his own, but is probably best known right now for contributing to Kamasi Washington's The Epic and Heaven and Earth. Still, he's a hugely important figure on the L.A. scene, …

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Trumpeter Jason Palmer is based in Boston, where he teaches at Berklee and plays regularly at Wally's. He's recorded extensively as a leader, and has also worked with players as different from each other as Matana Roberts and Grace Kelly. He's just released a new double live CD, Rhyme and Reason, with the help o…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Bassist Linda May Han Oh grew up in Australia, and moved to the US a little over ten years ago. In that time, she’s risen to a position of real prominence on the current jazz scene. She’s very much in demand as a bandmember, playing on albums by Dave Douglas, Art Hirahara, E.J. Strickland, and George Colligan; s…

Support Burning Ambulance on Patreon Branford Marsalis, for those who don’t know, is a saxophonist, and the older brother of Wynton Marsalis, the trumpeter and leader of Jazz at Lincoln Center. They’re from New Orleans, and started out working together, first in Art Blakey’s band and then on each other’s albums. They were already on separate paths …