An hour and a half with the great improvising pianist Marilyn Crispell, winner of a 2025 NEA Jazz Masters Award. We learn how and when she began improvising, and how she has learned to combine energy and calm over the course of a long and ever-...

A conversation with 86-year old musical master Allaudin Mathieu, who started out arranging for Duke Ellington and went on to become a great mentor and spiritual force, today making some of the best work of his career and continue to teach nonst...

Finally I dare to make myself the subject of an interview in my own podcast. The art/science pioneer Victoria Vesna grilled me on how I got where I am today: What I learned from John Cage, R. Murray Schafer, and all those birds, bugs, and whale...

David James Duncan worked on his masterwork novel SUN HOUSE for nearly two decades, and it has now arrived. I met him last in the early days of the project, and now sixteen years later we sit down to talk about why the best things often take ti...

Sun Chung founded Red Hook Records after working for more than a decade at ECM Records in Munich. It's rapidly becoming a beacon for what a creative music label can be in our tumultuous times. In this extensive conversation, we discuss why it c...

A far-reaching conversation with one of the finest bass players of our time, Glen Moore, known for his work with the Paul Winter Consort and Oregon, he also recorded many albums on ECM and Intuition with the likes of Tim Hardin, Larry Coryell, ...

Today I speak with the poet, activist, and environmental writer Lisa Wells, author of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World. We talk about the anger of youth, the fallibility of heroes, and the value of art and beauty in dark times.

Composer-performer Ben Neill reveals the history of his invention the Mutantrumpet, and his work over the years with Jon Hassell, John Cage, and La Monte Young, along with new ideas on where music will go in the coming decades. It will still h...

Today I speak with musician, software developer, sound experimenter Matthew Aidekman on what computers can and can't do for us in the world of audio, and why the search for surprising ways to transform music electronically will never end.

Erica Cirino, science journalist, photographer, adventurer, discusses her new book THICKER THAN WATER (Island Press), on her journey to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the problem of plastics in our world in general.

Happy to be back in Berlin after an absence of more than two years, I was invited to guest host Bernhard Wöstheinrich's radio show THF Experience, which broadcasts from an old guardhouse at the entrance to the Tempelhof Airport Park. We tackled...

Today I speak with philosopher and nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore, whose new book celebrates the wild music of the natural world, in the hope that we can attune to its beauty and still clearly see the challenges our species faces in shaping ...

Today I talk to anthropologist and writer Hugh Raffles about THE BOOK OF UNCONFORMITIES: SPECULATIONS ON LOST TIME, his latest epic work, a journey across the globe through personal tragedy, cultural conflict, and the raw qualities of the Earth...

Today I speak with the great English folk singer, musical archivist, and activist on how he became obsessed with that fine singing bird, the nightingale. That makes at least two of us who go out into the forests to perform along with this magni...

Jon Balke, master pianist, composer and bandleader, has blended the music of Africa and the Middle East with a uniquely precise and personal approach to improvisation, which sometimes blends his keyboard work with electronics and field recordin...

I am honored to present this live duo concert and discussion with the great Stephen Nachmanovitch, author of the books FREE PLAY and THE ART OF IS—improvisor, teacher, thinker. We converse through music and words, presenting our shared fascinat...

Unable to see, hear, or meet each other in the real world, Hanna and David try everything to break through the ‘meaninglessness' of nature to find truth, beauty, and contact in a world where invisible species are constantly trying to lure us be...

Professor David Rothenberg’s electronic music class at the New Jersey Institute of Technology is introduced to John Cage, and they are not pleased. As they ask themselves and their friends some of Cage's famous questions about what music is and...

Today I interview the great environmentalist and nature writer Carl Safina, discussing his new book Becoming Wild, which introduces culture in the world of animals, from sperm whales to macaws to chimpanzees. We discuss how his wo...

A walk through Queens with William Helmreich, a man who has walked every street in all the boroughs of New York City, not once but twice. We walked together in November 2017. In 2020 Helmreich became yet another casualty of the COV...

A conversation with jazz pianist and composer Daniel Kelly, where we discuss his unique series of pieces called "Rakonto," that combine storytelling with original music, created in communities all across America.

The great German synth player Bernhard Wöstheinrich, founder of Iapetus Media and Centrozoon, here reveals his secrets for what makes a good electronic sound. He and I experiment with some sounds he likes, some he dislikes. Together we learn to...

Elliott Sharp and David Rothenberg discuss their new books, IRRATIONAL MUSIC and NIGHTINGALES IN BERLIN, with sound artist Jem Finer, at Iklectik Arts, London, June 12th 2019.

We travel to the Arctic Hideaway, or Fordypningsrommet, on the Arctic archipelago of Fleinvær, invited by Nordic Music Days 2019. With Tine Surel Lange, Bjarne Kvinnsland, Håvard Lund, Gyrid Nordal Kaldestad, Leif Haglund and Espen Tversland, w...

Once again David and Jacob talk through some of their favorite ECM tracks, now all streaming everywhere except ONE mystery song, one of the earliest recordings Paul Motian ever made... You can only hear it here! Otherwise we've got Sinikka Lang...