Ella Feingold

It was a great pleasure to talk to the amazing guitarist, orchestrator & educator Ella Feingold on the podcast. She contacted me a couple of years ago after I released the Blake Mills/Chris Weisman episodes and said she’d love to talk. I started checking out her amazing work and became an instant fan. I’ve learned a lot from watching her videos and even more from this wonderful conversation, which I’m delighted to be able to share with you all.

Tineke Postma

I’m very thankful to be on the the road with Tineke Postma quite often. She is an amazing saxophonist & composer, I’m learning a lot from her and she’s so much fun to be around. We talk all the time when we’re on tour with the band Re:Calamari and this conversation actually happened between gigs. We could basically continue where we left off the day before.

Naturally, we focussed on many of the things I often ask Tineke about: her process as a bandleader & composer, her experiences with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Esperanza Spalding, Kris Davis & Terri Lynne Carrington, ideas & approaches for improvisation, finding your voice as an artist and much more.

As always it was a big pleasure to hang out together and I’m very excited to share this with you all now.

Eddie Henderson

Talking to the legendary Eddie Henderson was a dream come true for me. As I tell Eddie in the beginning of this episode, I’ve been listening to him for all my life: My father played Herbie Hancock’s “Mwandishi” albums for me as a kid and when I was 13 I saw Eddie with Herbie’s “Gershwin’s World” band in Düsseldorf. I’ll never forget it. Throughout the years I got more deeply into Eddie’s own catalog of records and learned a lot from listening to him. His sound alway touches me and I admire him on many levels.

So to finally get to talk to him about his time with Herbie, about what he learned from Miles Davis, about practicing with Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw, and how it was to play with Joe Henderson was an absolute honor.

In this music theres a deep tradition of passing on knowledge orally. This way future generations can learn from the elders. Eddie Henderson is not only a “witness to history” (the name of his latest album), he’s also very generous with sharing his wisdom. I’m glad we can all learn from maestro Eddie together now.