Lifetimes of Listening

How do you create a place for the arts to flourish? Why do youth need to be involved in expressing themselves with art? These are among the many things we speak about with our guest Logan Greene. He was one of the co-founders of the nonprofit organization Groundworks, an organization that promotes youth driven arts and music in Tucson, Arizona. In addition to telling us about Groundworks, Logan draws attention to some of the consci...

How does music sustain us during difficult times? Why do we now realize why live music is so important? Our guest today is Lia Falco, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Arizona. She was central to the founding of a school based mental health program that provides free mental health counseling for students and families in public education, a program which launched just before the pandemic. Her rese...

How come music reminds one of a place? Today’s episode explores stories of people coping with feeling homesick by listening to music. Our guest, Jaimie Matthews, helps train and supervise resident advisors for college dormitories. This role allows her to help young adults transition to being on their own, often for the first time in their lives. Jaimie’s experience helps us understand why and how music can become such a powerful re...

Why does singing in a choir have such an impact on people that they cherish those moments for the rest of their lives? Our show today explores a few of the many stories people have shared with us about the importance of being in a choir. Today’s guest is M. Nicole Davis, an Assistant Professor of Choral Conducting and Choral Music Education at the University of Arizona. She’s an ideal person to speak to the meaning of being in a ch...

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to travel from town to town to put on a concert? Our show today focuses on the stories of travelling musicians and the artists who help them put on concerts in towns across the country. Our guest in this episode, Ashley Kahn, is best known as a music journalist and author of many books about jazz and rock. Before he earned recognition as a writer, he worked behind the scenes to help touring mus...

What does mariachi do for the children who begin learning to play it at a young age? How does folklorico, the Mexican traditional dance that often accompanies mariachi, help shape young people’s identities? Our episode today celebrates stories of mariachi and folklorico. Our guest, Aracelli Valenzuela, is from a family who have dedicated themselves and been foundational to the youth mariachi movement in America. Ara’s love of helpi...

Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to share your story of a classic recording with someone who was there when it was made? Our episode focuses on stories of classic popular and rock music, all of which connects with our guest. Chris O’Dell was an employee of Apple Records and the Beatles, a personal assistant for the Rolling Stones, and a tour manager for many artists throughout the 1970s. The stories in this episode feature ...

Music affects us deeply, but we don’t often stop to talk to the people who make it possible. Our guest today is Leah Roseman, a professional musician, teacher, and podcaster. Her podcast, entitled Conversations with Musicians began in 2021, and she has already interviewed nearly 100 musicians from around the world. In this episode, we share with Leah some of the stories we’ve collected from musicians to see how they resonate with h...

Have you ever wondered why couples have a “song”? In this episode, Dan and Brian speak with Jake Harwood, a Professor of Communication at the University of Arizona, who has examined how music helps strengthen bonds between people. The beginning stories of many relationships feature music, and unsurprisingly, those stories are surfacing regularly in the archive. In this episode, we seek to better understand why music works so well t...

Dan and Brian speak with Chad Shoopman, the Director of Athletic Bands for the University of Arizona, about why so many of the stories in the Arizona Musical Memory archive celebrate being in a band. His experiences in marching bands and working for many different Disney ensembles, both as a leader, and as a session player, give him an interesting perspective on the stories we share from the interviews we have collected. Many music...

Dan and Brian talk to music theorist Don Traut about how sounds become anchors, or reference points for musical experiences. Tim Lohman describes how certain harmonies penetrate his being. Bruce Blackstone speaks of his realization that many of his favorite rock songs were based on the blues. David Harrington tells of the time that he realized when he had to be in a string quartet because of hearing a particular chord. The musical ...

Dan and Brian spoke with Kory Floyd, a scholar of the communication of affection, and Mary Francis O’Connor, an expert on bereavement, and the effects of loss on the body, during SXSW in 2022. The conversation engages three powerful stories about how music became intertwined with loss. Brent Davis, a hospice chaplain, tells of the death of an old navy veteran; Whitney Morgan shares a story of her father and dementia, and David Harr...

Dan and Brian speak with Susan Crane, a historian and scholar of communal and collective memories in this month’s episode of Lifetimes of Listening. Ntari Ali Gault’s story of the single “When Doves Cry”, Praise Zenenga’s reflections about performing African music in the United States with a multi-ethnic ensemble, and Sara Gulgas’s remembrance of attending an impromptu memorial gathering on the anniversary of John Lennon’s murder e...

Dan Kruse and Brian Moon have spent years asking people to share their memories about music. Now, they’ve begun to collect those stories in hopes of helping us all to better understand how music has gained meaning in our lives. The stories of musical memories and families, the theme of this month’s episode of Lifetimes of Listening, will likely resonate with some of your earliest memories of music in your life. Listen for entertai...