Burning Ambulance Podcast

Kenny Garrett has been playing for more than 40 years. Originally from Detroit, he joined the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the late 70s, when it was being run by Ellington’s son Mercer. He also played with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, and with Donald Byrd, Woody Shaw, and Freddie Hubbard. He was a member of a young lions group put together by Blue Note Records in the 80s called Out Of The Blue that also included the late drum...

I first learned about Arushi Jain three years ago, when most people who are aware of her work did. Her 2021 album Under The Lilac Sky was extremely beautiful, six tracks of droning, pulsing synth music with her vocals kind of floating in the middle like she was singing from the middle of an isolation tank. It was entirely created with a modular synth rig that she constructed and programmed, but the compositions were based on ragas ...

Rufus Reid is an extremely important but under-recognized figure in modern jazz. He’s always been someone who’s had one foot in the mainstream and one in the avant-garde — he did a lot of work with soul jazz and jazz-funk saxophonist Eddie Harris in the early 1970s, before joining Dexter Gordon’s band when Gordon made his famous US comeback after years in Europe. He was also part of Andrew Hill’s band in the late ’80s, and has done...

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It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these. In fact, the last episode was released in December of 2022. I talked then to film critic Walter Chaw about his book on the work of director Walter Hill. Since then, a lot’s been going on. Most notably, I wrote a book of...

This is not a typical episode of this podcast. Normally, as you probably know, I talk to musicians. And in 2022, we’ve specifically been talking about fusion, which means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And we’re going to get back to that subject in our next episode, when I have an interview with saxophonist Dave Liebman, who played with Miles Davis in the early '70s and also had his own band, Lookout Farm, ...

I have said two things all season long. The first is that we’re going to be exploring a single topic for ten episodes, and that topic is fusion. But the second thing I’ve been saying is that what I’m talking about when I say the word fusion isn’t a style or a genre, but a state of mind. It’s not what you play, it’s how you approach music-making.

In previous episodes, we’ve talked about what people typically think of as fusion, which...

In previous episodes, we’ve talked about what people commonly understand as fusion, which drummer Lenny White, who appeared in episode two of this series, prefers to call jazz-rock. That’s the version that starts with Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew and Tony Williams’ Lifetime and quickly branches out with Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return To Forever and Weather Report and on and on. But as we’ve continued the discussion, we’ve expanded t...

The latest episode of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with tuba player Bob Stewart.

I have said all season long that we’re going to be exploring a single subject for ten episodes, and that subject is fusion. But as I hope has become clear over the course of the five previous episodes, during which I interviewed techno pioneer Jeff Mills, drummer Lenny White, trumpeter Randy Brecker, pianist Cameron Graves, and gu...

As you know if you've been listening this season, we have a single subject we’re going to be exploring across ten episodes, and that subject is fusion. 

Fusion means much more, I think, than just the music that most people think of when they hear the word. I’m not talking exclusively about the big-name bands from the 1970s: the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and Weather Report. Those groups, and the Miles Davis bands from ...

Episode 73 of the Burning Ambulance podcast features an interview with pianist Cameron Graves.

I have a single subject we’re going to be exploring through all ten episodes that I’m going to be presenting this season, and that subject is fusion. Fusion means much more, I think, than just the music that most people probably think of when they hear the word. Of course, it immediately brings to mind bands from the 1970s like the Mahavis...

This season on the Burning Ambulance Podcast, we’re going to have a single subject we’re going to be exploring through all ten episodes, and that subject is fusion.

Fusion, of course, is a term that means different things to different people. When most people hear it, they probably think of bands from the 1970s like the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and Weather Report: groups that were formed by ex members of Miles Davis’...

This is the sixth year of the Burning Ambulance Podcast. This is episode 71, and I decided at the beginning of this year that it was time to change things up a little. So for all ten episodes that I’m going to be presenting this season, we’re going to have a single subject, and that subject is fusion. 

Lenny White played on one of the most important albums in the history of fusion, Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew. In the clip that you’re...

This is the Burning Ambulance podcast's sixth year, and our seventieth episode, so I decided it was time to change things up a little. This season, we’re going to have a single subject we’re going to be exploring through all ten episodes that I’m going to be presenting, and that theme is fusion.

Fusion is a very charged term. When most people hear it, in reference to music, anyway, they probably think of bands from the 1970s like th...

Billy Harper has had a pretty incredible career. He was a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1968. He played with Max Roach. He was part of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band and the Gil Evans big band, and because of those connections he got to play on a Louis Armstrong album. He was on Lee Morgan’s final studio album, recorded in 1971. And he’s had a solo career since the early Seventies, making legendary albums like Capra ...

Andrew Cyrille is the last man standing from the first wave of free jazz drummers. He and Milford Graves, Sunny Murray, and Rashied Ali really revolutionized jazz rhythm in their playing with Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane and other musicians in the early to mid ’60s. Their influence was huge, and each of them brought a different perspective and instantly identifiable style to the music. What I hear when I listen to Andr...

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Don Byron is originally from the Bronx, and he was kind of a fixture on the Downtown music scene in the late '80s and early '90s. His first album as a leader, Tuskegee Experiments, came out almost 30 years ago, in 1992; it featured a variety of musicians, including guitarist Bill Frisell, two different bassists, Reggie Workman and Lonnie Plaxico, and t...

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This is an episode I have been hoping to present since this podcast began. I’ve been requesting interviews with Braxton for years, but never gotten the okay until this month. And you know what? In retrospect, I’m glad it took as long as it did. You know the saying “When the student is ready, the master appears”? Bill Dixon said that to me when I interv...

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I’ve been listening to Wadada Leo Smith for a long time; I own a lot of his albums, but his catalog is really large. I interviewed him for a cover story in The Wire in 2009, which he actually remembered — that surprised me a little. He was an early member of the AACM, collaborated extensively with Anthony Braxton in 1969 and 1970, made some beautiful r...

Episode 63 of the Burning Ambulance Podcast features an interview with Seth Rosner and Yulun Wang of Pi Recordings.

As you probably know by now, a typical episode is based around an interview with an artist. But Pi Recordings is such an important label when it comes to the kind of music covered on Burning Ambulance – I mean, Roscoe Mitchell, who’s released music on Pi both as a solo artist and with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, was t...