Episodes

The NEA Jazz Master and four-time Grammy winner joins us to discuss 'Trip the Night Fantastic,' the second album from Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science, which sets deportation, prison abolition, and climate collapse to music for the dance floor.

The pop-chart analyst and 'Hit Parade' host joins us to discuss what better data revealed about hit songs, the slow end of the monoculture, and the cultural rules that keep outsiders off country radio.

On his debut solo album, 'Teleportations,' the synthesist, producer, and founding member of The Comet Is Coming turns grief and upheaval into a science-fictional voyage built entirely from analog machines.

The electronic music pioneer joins the podcast to discuss 'CIANI/ORKEST,' her live album pairing the Buchla synthesizer with the 50-piece Metropole Orkest, and why she has always heard the instrument as orchestral.

The veteran trumpeter and arranger joins the podcast to discuss the twin albums 'ResoNation Trio' and 'Ultra Resonance,' Laurie Anderson's lesson that you never need permission to make art, and why this music dies if it stays in a museum.

Trained in the Jackie McLean tradition and later mentored by Herbie Hancock, Hellmuth explains how 'Tether' turns trust between bandmates into the record's actual structure.

Trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas discusses his album Transcend, the Jack Whitten retrospective that reshaped his thinking about raw material, and why Booker Little gave an entire generation of players permission to keep scrambling.

Ora Cogan on the politics of 'Hard Hearted Woman,' the hollowing-out of folk tradition, and why her forties have been the best time of her life to be playing music.

From the Black Ark tapes buried in Lee Perry's yard to unreleased Dennis Brown sessions, Billy Polo on the forensic pleasures and urgent stakes of reggae's analog archive.

The Dutch composer joins Lawrence Peryer to discuss 'Asymmetrical Dot,' the album shaped by his mother's death, a grandson's birth, and four decades of learning which clichés to reject.

George Grella joins the podcast to discuss his book Minimalist Music and argue that the genre has nothing to do with sparse materials and everything to do with time.

On ‘The Observer Effect’, Canadian composer Meredith Bates builds long-form sound worlds from violin, electronics, and the recordings of the natural world—and finds that art, love, and politics are harder to separate than they appear.

Toronto drummer Nick Fraser discusses 'Areas,' his long creative partnership with Kris Davis and Tony Malaby, and what committing to acoustic music costs when electronics define the contemporary sound.

Composer, bandleader, birder, and unapologetic alarm-sounder, Maria Schneider brings 'American Crow' to The Tonearm for a conversation about listening as both artistic practice and civic obligation.

Armed with a saxophone, an Organelle, and an aluminum can, Caroline Davis spent a month in Wyoming making her debut solo record—and thinking about freedom in all its forms.

The Grammy-nominated composer and chief conductor of the Danish Radio Big Band discusses her new album Frames, the death of her mentor Jim McNeely, and why love is the only honest reason to make music.

Cellist and composer Tomeka Reid joins the podcast to discuss dance! skip! hop!, the fourth Tomeka Reid Quartet album, and why photographs of her grandmother's Wyoming life keep finding their way onto her record covers.

The Grammy-nominated saxophonist and Kneebody co-founder joins us for episode 300 to discuss his new album BaRcoDe, a project built around four of the most inventive mallet players working today.

Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore join The Tonearm to discuss 'Tragic Magic,' their debut collaboration recorded in nine days at the Philharmonie de Paris using instruments pulled directly from the museum's historic collection.

Claire Devlin and Eli Davidovici of Bellbird talk about the bird whose recorded cry became the foundation of 'The Call', the chordless sound that defines the quartet, and the political commitments embedded in the music.

The Philadelphia-based pedal steel player discusses ‘Language at an Angle’, his debut under his own name, and what Susan Alcorn taught him about tradition, freedom, and the instrument she loved.

From a Detroit high school full of concert grand harps to the experimental clubs of the East Village, Parkins traces the unlikely path that made her one of the most restless instrumentalists in contemporary music.

Five Grammys and a working museum of tape machines later, Osiris Studio's Michael Graves reflects on the ethics of restoration, the problem of artist intent, and why the work never stops surprising him.

The Michigan-based composer and multi-instrumentalist discusses Solo Three, his trilogy-closing collection of solo reinterpretations of works by Steve Reich, Glenn Branca, Charlemagne Palestine, and Laurie Spiegel.