Category Archives: All Interviews

Over the course of the last decade, Brooklyn native Adam O’Farrill, has cemented himself as one of the most in-demand trumpet players on the international contemporary jazz scene, and is widely recognized as a “rising star as a player and composer” (PopMatters) and “a blazing young trumpet talent” (The New York Times). Of course, none of this comes as any surprise, considering the rich musical lineage into which he was born: Adam’s grandfather was the boundary-pushing Cuban composer & arranger, Chico O’Farrill; his father is the composer, pianist & activist, Arturo O’Farrill; his mother, Alison Deane, is a classical pianist & educator; his brother and frequent collaborator, Zack O’Farrill, is a drummer & musicologist. Adam himself has been featured with the likes of Hiromi, Mary Halvorson, Vijay Iyer, Anna Webber, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Mulatu Astatke, Samora Pinderhughes, Son Lux, & Kaoru Watanabe, and has garnered widespread acclaim as a leader in his own right. Adam has released 4 albums documenting his longtime quartet Stranger Days, including 2024’s HUESO, which The Washington Post called, “strikingly original.” HUESO features saxophonist Xavier Del Castillo, bassist Walter Stinson, and his brother Zack on drums in the chord-less setting that has served as the vehicle for the lion’s share of O’Farrill’s output as a composer. The band’s previous album, Visions of Your Other, was named one of 2021’s best jazz albums by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Popmatters, and was awarded the Preis Der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik in January 2022. Adam has received awards and recognition for both his compositions and his work as an improviser. In 2014, he won 3rd place honors in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Trumpet Competition, and in both 2019 and 2021, he won the Downbeat Critics Poll for Best Rising Star Trumpeter. Adam has received commissions and grants from organizations such as The Shifting Foundation, South Arts, Roulette, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Metropolis Ensemble, The Jazz Gallery, as well as winning the ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award. Adam holds a B.M. in Jazz Performance from the Manhattan School of Music. During his time there, he studied composition with Reiko Füting, and trumpet with Laurie Frink, Thomas Smith, & Cecil Bridgewater. Previous to college, O’Farrill’s teachers included Jim Seeley, Nathan Warner & Ambrose Akinmusire, and he attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School for Music and Art and Performing Arts, in Manhattan.

Adam and I had a chance to get together ahead of the September 4th show at the North Street Cabaret. He is bringing his latest project ELEPHANT here with the same cast of players that are on the album of the same name that was released at the end of March:
Adam O’Farrill– trumpet/electronics, fender rhodes
Yvonne Rogers– piano, synthesizer
Walter Stinson– double bass
Russell Holzman– drums
We dive into both the event and that album to find out how both came to be, how it was possible to bring the same players on the road and how he takes the past and works in the future to create a unique now sound. Adam, as a bandleader, always brings a sound that leads me to o[pen spaces, undeveloped yet in my mind. He surrounds himself in his groups as well as jobs he accepts, with people who also seem to find ways to blaze those new trails within me.

Experience four days of interactive, immersive, and multisensory events at Olbrich Botanical Gardens from Wednesday, August 12 through Saturday August 15, including a two-day spatially composed Sound Garden installation by composer and NeuroArtist JG Everest. The NeuroArts Festival will have a variety of programming centered on deepening audiences’ connection with the natural environment and with their Madison community, including participatory art workshops, sound installations within the Gardens, and collaborations with local performance groups. All events are free and open to the public; workshops will require advance registration. No prior experience necessary. This event was organized by the community curation project, LAB^4.

Sound Garden with JG Everest:
•Friday, August 14, 1:00-8:00pm
•Saturday, August 15, 10:00am-6:00pm

Composer, Director & Historian JG Everest is a multi-disciplinary artist working at the intersections of engagement, ecology, history & the emerging field of NeuroArts through a variety of collaborative place-making practices. He creates site-specific performance installations that connect the histories, ecology & cultures of places & communities, using spatial sound design as an integral compositional element. He has worked as music director & sound designer, as well as performer for many projects & performing ensembles, including over a decade each with Catalyst Dance and Roma di Luna. He regularly designs & leads integrative workshops and classes that connect participants to community, their own creativity, and the natural world, through a variety of disciplines and practices. He has brought his immersive, site-specific “Sound Garden” installations to outdoors sites in the UK, Canada, and across the USA. He was a 2019 McKnight Artist Composer Fellow, and MNPAiR Artist in Residence at Wild River State Park 2024-25.

I had the chance to catch up with JG Everest ahead of this mind-opening event at Olbrich Botanical Gardens. We dive into the specific event, the mapping and planning that goes into a sound garden installation and the specific composition chosen (and how it is chosen) for this site specific event. This is yet another fine example of how sound and music can be interwoven with nature elegantly and with intention to help foster a new sense of community.

70 years after its initial recording, blues-rock artist Amani Burnham posted a video of himself playing Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man.” It was surreal to see a nineteen year old on Instagram wielding a white Fender Stratocaster with such dexterous ferocity & one-of-a-kind personality. In his hands, the Willie Dixon blues standard sounded sexy & dangerous again. At the time, Amani hadn’t been playing guitar for very long, and the post was simply a natural extension of his love for blues-rock. Yet his fluid soloing and electrifying showmanship captured the imagination of blues fans and seasoned professional musicians alike, inadvertently heralding the arrival of a new blues dynamo. On May 29th, he is stepping out from behind the screen with his debut album, ‘Roots & Wings’, coming soon on Blind Pig Records. The 12-track collection showcases Amani’s remarkable guitar work—played uniquely with his right-hand thumb rather than a pick—alongside soulful vocals and introspective songwriting. From the turbo-charged instrumental “Fastlane” to the deeply personal title track reflecting on his Ethiopian roots, the album crackles with groovy blues-rock riffs, cosmic solos, and stinging vibrato. Recorded at the renowned Carriage House Studios with a classic power-trio setup, Roots & Wings honors the legacy of blues-rock giants while heralding a bold new voice for a new generation. Since starting on social media in late 2023, Amani has amassed more than 240,000 followers and nearly 30 million cumulative views on TikTok, Instagram, & Facebook.

I had the chance to get a quick hang in with Amani to get a deeper sense of how this debut album, ‘Roots and Wings‘ went from ideas to just about being unleashed into the world. We talk about how some of the songs were originally writing when he was just a true kid but he sounds like a young man who feels the past as he helps shape the future of the blues. There is so much, as a listener, you will say you recognize…but its fresh and is like a perfectly fitting ballcap – just so right. We discuss the title track so people get a sense of a being who is grounded and we allow Amani to build a setlist for airplay one day y choosing one of this top to bottom fabulous album and adds a few tunes to it.

photo by: J.B. Lawrence

Some artists spend their whole lives getting ready for the moment the world finally hears them. Brother Wallace is one of them. Today, the West Point, Georgia-bred singer, pianist, & soul revivalist announces his debut album, Electric Love, out May 8 via ATO Records. It’s a bold 1st chapter from a voice that feels less like a “new artist” and more like a force that’s been building quietly for years. Raised in a small rural town where the church was both community and classroom, Wallace began singing early and started formal piano training at six years old. By 14, he was directing a 100-member choir—leading not from ambition, but from instinct. Music wasn’t extracurricular; it was identity. Still, his path didn’t follow the typical industry arc. Wallace built a life at the intersection of art & service, becoming a K–12 music teacher and shaping young voices day after day, even as his own kept growing into something undeniable. Over time, that “teacher” story expanded into something bigger: including sharing the stage with gospel legend Kirk Franklin performing at Madison Square Garden. But it wasn’t until a chance meeting sparked a creative partnership—one that stretched across years and continents—that Brother Wallace’s vision began assembling into the album it was always meant to become. That partnership was with Dan Taylor (The Heavy), who became not just a collaborator but a catalyst. Recorded at Real World Studios (the legendary facility founded by Peter Gabriel) and produced/co-written by Taylor, Electric Love captures the breathless immediacy of Wallace’s performances—engineered and mixed by Bob Mackenzie (James Blake, The 1975, King Krule, SAULT) and Jim Abbiss (Adele, Arctic Monkeys). The result is soul music that feels alive in your hands: gritty, radiant, and built around the kind of vocal that turns rooms silent before it turns them inside out. Across its 13 songs, Electric Love is less a debut than a revelation—a body of work fueled by gospel roots and classic soul lineage (Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Southern soul greats) while refusing to live in nostalgia. Wallace writes in lived-in scenes and hard-earned feeling: heartbreak without defeat, joy without naïveté, vulnerability without apology. Brother Wallace will bring that world to the stage supporting St. Paul & The Broken Bones on his first-ever tour—an ideal match for a performer whose voice and presence were made for big rooms, shared air, and nights that feel like revival.

I had the chance to catch up with Brother Wallace ahead of the May 3rd show with St. Paul and the Broken Bones at the Sylvee. Not only did we get a chance to talk about what the people in attendance can expect from him and band, we learn who the players with him are, but the New alum Electric Love drops may 8th. We dive into the story behind the album from how it went down to the feeling of it about to be in the world in its entirety. We get the true story of how he got to be a [part of working with the Heavy – yep – he took a call at the mall and we do share a little educator banter about our ways as well. Before I let him go, I of course wanted to know if he had to air a track as part of building a set on the radio from the new record, which does he go with and why. This question is almost always interesting and often leads me to new artists…but his setlist included some classics.