The Tonearm

Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Michael Graves, a five-time Grammy-winning mastering engineer and the founder of Osiris Studio in Los Angeles.

Michael's work is restoration as archaeology—pulling performances off deteriorating tapes, damaged acetates, and obsolete formats, then deciding how much intervention is too much. He's done this for recordings by Hank Williams, Aretha Franklin, Stax songwriters, and field recordi...

Today we’re putting The Tonearm's needle on musician and composer Erik Hall.

Based in Michigan, Erik Hall has spent the last five years doing something that sounds simple but definitely is not: recording landmark works of contemporary classical music entirely on his own.

Erik’s 2020 solo reconstruction of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians won the Libera Award for Best Classical Record. Reich wrote to tell him he'd reinvented the p...

Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Toronto saxophonist Patrick Smith.

Patrick has become a key player in the city's creative music scene. His new album, Words Underlined, came out in December on Lit Soc Records. It's the first release from the new label started by Sellers & Newell, a Toronto bookstore that moonlights as a music venue. Patrick recorded there with guitarist Dan Pitt and drummer Lowell Whitty. The trio pl...

Today, we’re putting The Tonearm's needle on Stephen Vitiello.

Stephen is an electronic musician and media artist. His sound installations are in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon. He's worked with Pauline Oliveros, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Joan Jonas. By day, he teaches Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Stephen’s latest project is Trinity, a collaborative album...

Show Notes

Australian composer Lawrence English has spent over two decades treating sound as something that occupies your body, not just your ears. Putting The Tonearm's needle on Lawrence English means entering a sonic world where you're never quite sure what you're hearing or where it's coming from, and if you are a listener like our host, that will suit you just fine.

Lawrence’s recent album Trinity pairs him with Stephen...

Today we're putting The Tonearm's needle on pianist and composer Noah Franche-Nolan.

Noah's latest album, Rose-Anna, is named after his Acadian great-grandmother, a church organist from Grand Falls, New Brunswick. The Acadians are French-speaking people with deep roots in Canada's Maritime provinces. The Acadians were expelled from their land by the British in the late 1700s and many of them migrated south to Louisiana where they be...

Today we’re putting The Tonearm's needle on author and behavioral scientist Michael Hallsworth.

Michel has spent the last two decades applying behavioral science to real-world problems at the Behavioural Insights Team. He's held positions at Princeton, Columbia, Imperial College London, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Michael's new book, The Hypocrisy Trap, takes on something we all recognize instantly but rarely understand: why ...

We're putting The Tonearm's needle on John Mlynczak, President and CEO of the National Association of Music Merchants.

NAMM is the trade association for the music, sound, and event industries. Basically, NAMM represents the companies that make the tools your favorite music artists use to create their work.

John has spent years at Hal Leonard and PreSonus Audio, where music education meets technology. He built curricula, managed ...

Today we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Patricia Brennan, a vibraphonist and composer who grew up in Veracruz, Mexico, playing salsa with her dad while listening to Hendrix and Zeppelin with her mom. She studied classical percussion at the Curtis Institute, performed with Yo-Yo Ma and the Philadelphia Orchestra, then found her voice and career in jazz and improvisation.

Patricia’s latest album, Of The Near And Far, takes constel...

Today we're putting The Tonearm's needle on drummer Phil Haynes.

Since moving to New York from Oregon in 1983, Phil's played on scores of recordings with artists like Anthony Braxton and David Liebman. Phil has joined me once already, in March 2024, to discuss his memoir, Chasing the Masters: First Takes of a Modernist Drumming Artist.

Phil’s with me today to discuss his band Free Country, which takes American roots mu...

Today we're putting The Tonearm's needle on violinist and composer Bryan Senti.

Bryan Senti won a BAFTA for scoring the BBC series Mood. He's composed for films since 2015 and worked with artists like Regina Spektor and Mark Ronson. But his new album La Marea tells a different story—his father's story.

La Marea takes Cuban migration and turns it into sound. His previous album, Manu, honored his Colombian...

Our recent episode featuring Wilco and creative music guitarist Nels Cline has proven to be a listener-favorite. This holiday season, we thought it might be fun to give you even more of what we know you love. So … we are excited to bring you another conversation with Nels, this one from the Wilco Will Love You Podcast.

Wilco Will Love You is hosted by two fans who cover the music and influence of the Chicago band. The podcast is co-...

Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Graham St John, a cultural anthropologist and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield in the UK.

Graham has spent decades studying transformational events, psychedelic culture, and electronic dance music scenes. He's written ten books, and his latest is Strange Attractor: The Hallucinatory Life of Terence McKenna, published by MIT Press. McKenna was the 20th century's psy...

Today, we’re putting The Tonearm’s needle on guitarist Nels Cline.

Most people know Nels Cline as Wilco's guitarist for the past two decades. But his range goes far beyond indie rock. He's spent forty-plus years moving between jazz clubs, punk venues, and studios where the rules get bent or thrown out entirely. Rolling Stone put him on their list of the top 100 guitarists of all time, but that tells you nothing about how he actually...

Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on pianist Marcus Roberts.

Roberts plays jazz piano like he's lived through its entire history. His style pulls from Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller as much as it does from bebop. He spent years in Wynton Marsalis's band, has performed piano concertos with Seiji Ozawa, and today leads The Modern Jazz Generation, a 12-piece ensemble encompassing three decades of musicians.

Roberts is here to...

Show Notes

Ned Rothenberg just released his first solo album in thirteen years, Looms & Legends, and it shows why he's been called America's most intimate composer and improviser. Ned’s improvisations and compositions display his use of extended techniques like circular breathing and multiphonics, while others tell stories through melody. He calls it music for an imaginary culture - sounds that feel indigenous to a plac...

Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón.

A MacArthur Fellow, Guggenheim recipient, and Grammy winner, Miguel has spent over two decades creating music that connects jazz tradition with Puerto Rican rhythms and modern composition.

He's here to talk about his latest release, Vanguardia Subterránea - his quartet's first live album, captured at the Village Vanguard with music...

Today we're putting The Tonearm's needle on bassist and composer Linda May Han Oh.

Linda's a Grammy winner who's recorded with Pat Metheny, Kenny Barron, and Joe Lovano. She was even the model for the bassist character in Pixar's 'Soul.' But it's her own work that brings us together.

Her latest album, Strange Heaven, explores why we choose familiar hells over strange heavens—why we stick with what we know even when cha...

Today on The Tonearm, we're celebrating the inaugural Jazz Forward Award winners from All About Jazz. Since 1995, All About Jazz has been a driving force for jazz discovery. Now they're recognizing industry trailblazers who actively promote jazz awareness and culture.

We'll hear from four organizations reshaping how jazz connects with audiences worldwide. Ed Trefzger from JazzWeek tracks radio airplay across North Ame...