Keeping up with the Jazz world, Leander Young, carries out authentic conversions with and about musicians. Make sure to subscribe, leave a comment, and rating. Connect with us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @improvexchange #improvexchange www.improvexchange.com
Episodes
Sunday Sep 18, 2022
Sunday Sep 18, 2022
Nicole Johänntgen, jazz saxophonist, composer, and coach, tours Europe-wide with her band "Henry" and her solo program. Her second solo album was released in June 2022 on her label "Selmabird Records". She has produced 20 albums to date and received numerous awards. Johänntgen also performs internationally as a guest soloist at the invitation of various bands and is given the artistic direction to put together projects for festivals. Her focus is on live playing, studio recording, and mentoring. Thus, in 2022, she will increasingly conduct workshops for young people, as well as adults, who want to expand their knowledge in music, in jazz. In 2015 she founded the "Kids Jazz Club" and in 2013 the music business workshop SOFIA Support Of Female Improvising Artists to support young female jazz musicians in self-management and networking. Nicole Johänntgen's musical career began 28 years ago. At the age of six on the piano and years later she found her way to the saxophone and jazz as well as pop. First, she founded her Saarland band "Nicole Jo" at the age of 17, of which there are now six albums. She quickly expanded her radius. Played in America with the Sisters in Jazz (2003). Was a member of the European Swinging Jazz Orchestra, the IASJ International Association of Jazz of Schools, and the Dutch Rembrandt Frerichs project. Nicole Johänntgen studied jazz/popular music at the State Academy of Music in Mannheim, Germany, and has lived in Switzerland with her family since 2005.
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Sunday Jul 10, 2022
Sunday Jul 10, 2022
For over fifteen years, John Yao has been honing his talents as a trombonist, a composer and arranger, and has cemented his place on the New York City jazz scene. Yao’s lyrical soloing and expressive round tone combined with his with a creative hunger for exploring the boundaries of harmony and rhythm in his compositions/arrangements has established him as a unique musical talent. Yao has released five solo recordings, all of which feature his adventurous, boundary-pushing compositions for small groups and big bands alike. As a composer, Yao has also been commissioned to write works for professional artists and ensembles including the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, Jazz Orchestra of Philadelphia, Luis Bonilla, and HGM Jazzorkestar Zagreb among many others. His works have been performed internationally by many college and high school ensembles, including Temple University, Indiana University and the University of North Carolina, to name a few. Many of his works are published and available to professional and educational ensembles. As a trombonist, Yao has worked extensively as a sideman for Grammy-award winning New York City ensembles, such as the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and Arturo O’Farrill, and the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra among many others. Yao has also established himself as an in-demand educator in New York and beyond. Presently he serves as Assistant Professor of Trombone at Berklee College of Music, and as an Adjunct faculty member at Molloy College. He is an active guest artist and soloist at colleges and universities around the United States and abroad.
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Sunday Jun 19, 2022
Sunday Jun 19, 2022
Jonas Timm is a Leipzig-based pianist, composer und improviser. He grew up in Berlin in within his parental background of Choir music. Trained in classical Piano and Voice starting in the age of 5, he discovered improvised music in his early teens and went to study Music in Leipzig with Grandmaster Richie Beirach, Albert Bover and Michael Wollny. Besides he learned from: Alexander von Schlippenbach, Sebastian Schunke and Nils Klein among others...
As formative part of Leipzigs prospering young Jazz scene, he tries to develop new spaces in intercultural exchange between people and continents. Jonas is currently collaborating and touring with several Ensembles like the Berlin Radio Choir and the Gewandhaus Choir Leipzig and played with Norma Winstone, Theo Bleckmann, Johannes Enders to list a few...
He is a current scholarship holder of the State of Saxony, the German Foundation of Orchestra, the Performing Rights Society and the Foundation of the Castle of Rheinsberg. Furthermore he does curate the anually MJUZIK Festival and the „Reihe 22“ in Leipzig On April 22, 2022, Jonas released his Debut CD “Morbu” as JazzThing Next Generation Vol. 90 with Diego Pinera (drums), Tino Derado (accordion), Bertram Burkert (acoustic guitar), Lorenz Heigenhuber (Doublebass), where he combines the rhythms of Latin-American Dances with the harmonic heritage of the post-impressionistic composers of Spain and France. In this episode, Jonas shares his background, education, and musical journey.
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Sunday Jun 05, 2022
Sunday Jun 05, 2022
Joel A. Martin is a Norwalk CT-based pianist, producer, composer, and arranger who has collaborated with, and/or written music for, Grammy® Award-winners Alan Menken, Kathleen Battle, Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, cellist Eugene Friesen of the Paul Winter Consort, and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jaimoe of the Allman Brothers, among many luminaries.
At age 17 Joel was the youngest and the first African-American pianist to compete in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (1985). He has appeared as a soloist with the NY Philharmonic, El Paso Symphony, Springfield Symphony Orchestra (MA), Philadelphia Orchestra, Cab Calloway Orchestra, New Hampshire Festival Orchestra, and the Hartford Symphony, among many others.
Trained as a classical pianist at the Hartt School of Music and SUNY, Purchase, he created "Jazzical" in 1995 as a celebration of creative fusion: "the explosive union of classical composition and jazz innovation ignited with a fresh spirit all its own." This concept, form and vehicle "captures the dynamic force of multiple cultures and influences, unleashing a kinetic energy that breaks down boundaries and yields whole new worlds of musical expression." In this episode, Joel shares his background, education, and musical journey.
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Sunday May 22, 2022
Sunday May 22, 2022
Alyn Shipton is a writer, publisher, broadcaster, and jazz double bassist. He has broadcast about jazz since 1989, and currently hosts BBC Radio 3’s long-running and much-loved programmed Jazz Record Requests. His biographies of Dizzy Gillespie (1999) and singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson (2013) both won Association for Record Sound Collections (ARSC) Awards for Excellence; and Nilsson also gained an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thompson Award. His New History of Jazz (2001) was the Jazz Journalists’ Association (JJA) book of the year’ by the Jazz Institute of Chicago. His most recent work, The Art of Jazz: A Visual History (2020), was described as ‘indispensable’ by Publishers Weekly. He co-leads the Buck Clayton Legacy Band, and is a research fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London (where he teaches Jazz History to Emma Rawicz). In this episode, Alyn shares his background, education, and musical journey.
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Monday May 16, 2022
Monday May 16, 2022
The JuJu Exchange is a jazz-fusion group founded by three childhood friends from Chicago, each bringing their own unique stories and traits to the collective.
Nico Segal (trumpeter and producer) is Grammy Awarded musician and producer who is a frequent Chance the Rapper collaborator and trumpet player in Chance’s band The Social Experiment.
Julian Davis Reid (pianist and producer) is an artist-theologian who also hosts spiritual retreats called Notes of Rest, which interweave texts and music to promote rest, contemplation and creativity.
Nova Zaii (drummer and producer) is a sonic designer and the inventor of the patented Nova Portals instrument, a touchless electronic instrument.
Whether performing at The Chicago Jazz Fest or The Songbyrd, The JuJu Exchange brings uncut emotion with the intent to move the audience in mind, body, & soul. The band’s debut project Exchange reached #1 on the Apple Jazz Albums Chart upon release and their new single Walk Cycle debuted #1 on the All-New Jazz Spotify Playlist. They released their second record, The Eternal Boombox EP, inspired to provide relief as the world grappled with a catastrophic year. Each song corresponds to a stage of grief from the Kübler-Ross “Five Stages of Grief” Cycle.
The JuJu Exchange creates experimental and nuanced music that calls us all to wonder and trust. Their music, primarily instrumental, blends acoustic and digital instruments to accompany meaningful conversation around spiritual, mental, and physical experiences amongst their audiences' diverse backgrounds. They hope their music inspires the listener to participate in the kinds of exchange the world desperately needs.
The band has been booked for Microsoft Teams Roundtable, Yale University, Northwestern University, Jazz Institute of Chicago, Chicago Ideas Week, and Apple On Michigan. The band’s members have worked, performed, and produced with artists including Chance The Rapper, Frank Ocean, Derrick Hodge, Andrew Bird, Tank & The Bangas, Peter CottonTale, Jamila Woods, Grace Weber, Jennifer Hudson, Tiff Joy, VIc Mensa, Prefuse 73, Fulcrum Point New Music Project, and The Chicago Children’s Choir. In this episode, Julian Davis Reid shares his background, education, and musical journey.
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Sunday May 01, 2022
Sunday May 01, 2022
Theon Cross is an award-winning tuba player and composer who not only redefines what can be done with his instrument but also transcends traditional genre conventions with his heady brew of low-end theory combined with strains of ‘jazz, dub, hip-hop, soca, grime, and other sounds from the Afro-Caribbean diaspora’.
His new album, Intra-I (meaning ‘Within Self’) syntheses the diversity of his musical art and experience to deliver an essential message to a world gripped by tribulation. Across ten sonically divergent and bass-rich tracks, Intra-I explores themes of self-reliance, origins, identity, and more. An exploratory and upful celebration of Afro-Diaspora Music, the album features songs that examine self-development, the importance of history and heritage, and the strength in adversity shown by the first generations of post-war Caribbean immigrants to the UK. In this episode, Theon shares his background, education, and musical journey.
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Sunday Apr 24, 2022
Sunday Apr 24, 2022
Tony Overwater is an award-winning bass player whose sound and unique way of playing have established him as a key player in the European music world. He is a remarkable solo performer and leader of his own projects but also a collaborative and attentive sideman. He is well known for his pioneering work in Arab music.
In 1995 Tony Overwater went on tour with the Yuri Honing Trio through the Middle East, notably Lebanon and Syria, and fell in love with Arab music culture. He met musicians from Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq and started a long-time collaboration with the Lebanese singer Rima Khcheich.
He has been involved in Arab music ever since and developed a uniquely new playing style on the acoustic bass which allows him to play the microtonality of the Arab scales. He has been studying the maqams (scales), rhythms, and songs of classical Arab music. He recorded several albums with Rima Khcheich and eventually became the musical director of her ensemble. Regularly Rima Khcheich and Tony Overwater play duo concerts in which they perform classical Arab music in muwashah style in which the acoustic bass replaces the Oud. This has never been done before and is highly successful at festivals around the world. In this episode, Tony shares his background, education, and musical journey.
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Monday Apr 18, 2022
Monday Apr 18, 2022
As a member of a musical family, Aleksi has been exposed to virtually all styles of music since birth, from jazz to classical, folk to rock, and a half dozen other stops in between some of those genres. He’s listened to everyone from Jimi Hendrix to John Scofield, Derek Trucks to Wes Montgomery. His guitar speaks an authoritative language and yet, there is a relaxed feeling and an inbred admiration of music’s many faces. The sound is warm, round, and full, the phrasing is like a smooth-flowing brook, bubbling here, charging there, but always reflecting his basic understanding of what his instrument is about.
As any good New York artist does, Aleksi plays with the best and brightest across the creative landscape. From films to radio, pop to jazz, on tape or video, he maintains an ideal balance of adaptability and uniqueness. He’s played and/or recorded with Snack Cat (The Funk-Soul band he leads), Roberta Flack, Jersey Boys, J Hoard, Bailen, the Broadway cast of Aladdin, The Seth Weaver Big Band, Bailen, Peter Bernstein, Sam Dillon, Paul Bollenback, Augie Haas, Benny Benack, Vic Juris, Mike Glick (his pops) plus dozens of regional and nationally known bands and artists. He has also worked with major labels and publishing companies including Warner Chappel, Warner Music, Ropadope, APM, EMI, and Outside in Music.
Guitar and Me is the debut solo release from New York-based guitarist Aleksi Glick. The album plays as a genealogy of the guitar, weaving through various musical styles that have been crucial to the guitar’s evolution as well as influential to Glick’s own journey with the instrument. While still rooted in jazz and blues, the album pushes the boundaries of the genre by seamlessly floating through an eclectic mix of other styles including R&B, folk, rock, and bossa nova. Guitar and Me feature thirteen original compositions and solo arrangements of guitar-based classics that Glick recorded while in isolation at the height of the Covid pandemic.
The album starts off with a burner, “With Ease,” an original bluesy hard bop tune that came to Glick after a memorable Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The bossa and R&B-infused title track “Guitar and Me” follow as Glick’s own love letter to his guitar. A mix of originals, jazz standards, and classic songs follow. Other highlights include an arrangement of the Grateful Dead fan-favorite “Casey Jones” and the timeless classic “Georgia on My Mind.” “A Tune for Vic,” is a moving tribute to Glick’s recently deceased mentor, the late great Vic Juris. The album concludes with another original, “Rebirth” which is an homage to Glick’s early love of classic rock, and finally “Long Black Veil” one of two tracks that Glick sings on. With each track, you can hear the different influences on Glick’s playing from the classic tones of Wes Montgomery to the modern techniques of John McLaughlin, to the dynamic energy of Jimmy Hendrix. In this episode, Aleksi shares his background, education, and musical journey.
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Sunday Apr 10, 2022
Sunday Apr 10, 2022
Emma Rawicz is an award-winning young saxophonist and composer, already making waves on the UK music scene. She has been described as a force to be reckoned with' (Jazzwise) and 'a fast-rising star' (London Jazz News). At the age of 20, she has already recorded her eagerly awaited debut album featuring Ant Law, made up entirely of her original compositions, the first single Voodoo was released in February, and the album Incantation is due to be released in May 2022.
She has also created a name for herself both as a bandleader and a sideman. New arrival on the scene, she has already made an impact, regularly playing at major London jazz venues with a wide range of established musicians. Emma is a recipient of the 2021 Drake Yolanda Award.
Emma's influences range from modern jazz and fusion to folk and soul, key figures in her musical development include Chris Potter, Ari Hoenig, Kenny Jarrett, Joe Henderson, Chick Corea, and more.
Growing up in rural North Devon, Emma didn't discover jazz until the age of 15, and didn't pick up a tenor saxophone until a year later, but had spent her childhood otherwise immersed in largely folk and classical music.
Emma is a natural performer. Her music has a unique sound, fusing all her many influences, and her compositions range from lilting Afro Cuban-inspired grooves to hard-hitting modern jazz and funk numbers. In this episode, Emma shares her background, education, and musical journey.
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