The Third Story with Leo Sidran

Forty years ago this month, Paul Simon released Graceland , an album that became one of the defining records of his career, and one of the most celebrated and debated albums of its era. The record would go on to sell...

For his 83rd birthday, Ben Sidran revisits a 1974 DownBeat profile (done when he was 30) and considers what has changed - and what hasn't - over more than half a century of music and life. In his annual birthday...

Ben Wikler has spent his career moving between comedy and politics, communication and organizing. Growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, a city shaped by civic engagement, academic inquiry, and the satirical spirit that gave...

A conversation with Ben Sidran, from Greece on America's 250th birthday, about jazz, democracy, identity, and what remains when the scaffolding begins to shake.

Before The Irish Goodbye became one of the most acclaimed debut novels of 2025, Heather Aimee O'Neill spent years quietly writing it while building a career helping other writers tell their stories. Here, she discusses...

Saxophonist and bandleader Lakecia Benjamin has become one of the most dynamic voices in jazz today. Here she talks about hanging up on Clark Terry, finding her way from Washington Heights to the international stage...

Miles Davis spent his life searching. He changed the sound of jazz repeatedly, assembling generations of musicians around him and pushing constantly toward something new. Few artists loom so large over the history of...

Mexican singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas on how growing up in Tijuana - a border city suspended between Mexico and the United States - developed an instinct for living "in-between," musically and personally. She traces...

Dida Pelled on her latest album I Wish You Would , a blues-focused project recorded with Tony Scherr, Kenny Wollesen, and Sullivan Fortner. Along the way she considers her approach to tradition, identity, and finding a...

Singer, songwriter, and founder of Song For You , Emily Cavanagh on music, service, resilience, and finding purpose in uncertain times. In the early days of the pandemic, Emily began calling hospitals with one simple...

At his monthly series The Tell , writer and storyteller Michael Leviton brings together performers and audiences for an evening where nothing is scripted and no lineup is announced. At The Tell , audiences arrive...

When singer Janis Siegel was invited to help produce a Women's History Month event at the United Nations, everything seemed aligned—until she was told, just days before, that she would not be allowed to speak. She had...

When I arrived in Palm Springs last month, a few days before the concert-lecture I was to play with my father, Ben Sidran, I found him surrounded by months of research notes, trying to wrestle his ideas into something...

Phoebe Katis — a UK-born, New York–based songwriter can pinpoint the moment when her life and career were quietly reoriented. It started with a single direct message. Katis traces her journey from being a young...

Keren Ann was born in Israel, spent her early years in the Netherlands, and later moved to France. The daughter of a Russian-Jewish father and a Dutch-Javanese mother, she grew up multilingual and deeply aware that...