The Third Story

Pianist Sullivan Fortner on growing up in New Orleans, nearly choosing medicine over music, and the teachers and mentors who shaped him, from Barry Harris and Fred Hersch to his years playing with Roy Hargrove; his musical and personal partnership with Cécile McLorin Salvant, his fascination with sound and experimentation, and the making of Solo Game and Leave That In There.

Argentine singer, composer, and producer Sofía Rei talks about leaving Buenos Aires and rediscovering the music of home, moving beyond the boundaries of jazz, embracing electronics and production, and learning from collaborators and students. Her new album Antónima brings those threads together through what she calls “Folk and Futurism” a meeting place for tradition, technology and a distinctly contemporary musical identity.

Forty years ago this month, Paul Simon released Graceland, an album that became one of the defining records of his career, and one of the most celebrated and debated albums of its era. Music historian Ashley Kahn tells the whole complicated story in his new book, Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland.

On his 83rd birthday, Ben Sidran revisits a 1974 DownBeat profile and considers what has changed - and what hasn’t - over more than half a century of music and life. In his annual birthday conversation with his son Leo, he reflects on aging, ambition, practice, and the surprising persistence of a worldview formed long ago.

Ben Wikler, author of This Is the Plan, talks to Leo Sidran about humor, organizing, civic life, and the Wisconsin values that shaped his approach to democracy. A thoughtful discussion of community, political communication, and why, as Wikler says, "democracy is exhausting until you discover solidarity."

Before The Irish Goodbye became one of the most acclaimed debut novels of 2025, Heather Aimee O'Neill spent years quietly writing it while building a career helping other writers tell their stories. Here she discusses the vulnerability of ambition, the challenge of living an authentic life, and the strange transition from observer to protagonist.

Saxophonist and bandleader Lakecia Benjamin has become one of the most dynamic voices in jazz. In this wide ranging conversation with Leo Sidran she recalls some of her early professional experiences, and how the mentors, heroes, setbacks and aspirations that shaped her journey continue to inform her new album, We Dream.

To mark what would have been Miles Davis's 100th birthday, The Third Story with Leo Sidran revisits a rare 1986 conversation between Miles and Ben Sidran, recorded on the terrace of Miles’s Malibu home.

After nearly three decades of resisting fixed categories, Julieta is returning to the place where that sensibility began. This year she releases Norteña, an album that turns back toward the border city where all of that started. She describes it as a tribute to the feeling of growing up on the border.

Dida Pelled talks to Leo Sidran about her latest album I Wish You Would, her approach to tradition, identity, finding a personal voice across genres, discovering the truth about her sexuality, her singing, and the six strings she loves so much.