Gilad Weiss takes us on a visit to his music studio and improvises on several of his instruments, including the fretless guitar, and some of the instruements from Turkey and Central Asia, such as the kopuz, the baglama and the Turkmenistani dutar. He also spoke to me about his duo project with the Anatolian kamanche player Melisa Yildirim and we’re including a track from their beautiful album, which is linked in the show notes for this episode along with Gilad’s album Improvisations on Fretless Guitar Volume 1, and the ways to connect with Gilad. He shared his valuable insights about teaching music, and teaching the guitar, improvisation and interesting details about the modes and tuning systems for the various instruments he demonstrates. This episode has a lot of improvised music; Gilad spent much of the interview with an instrument in his hand; please use the detailed timestamps to navigate the episode, which like all my episodes you can either watch on my YouTube or listen to on all the podcast platforms. 

In this episode, you get to hear the brilliant and engaging keyboard player and composer Kait Dunton in both conversation and a mini theory workshop on her hit tune This One’s For You! In this wide-ranging conversation, we talked about her early days with Snarky Puppy, recording the soundtrack to A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, her love of vintage keyboards and the challenges they present, and her unique approach to teaching which has been influenced by her mentor John D’earth. Kait has gained a huge following on social media like Instagram and TikTok, so I was curious to get her perspectives on connecting with her fans, and dealing with necessary boundaries. Kait’s new album Keyboards features the sounds of the 1970s and we got into some of her influences and her personal journey to becoming a full-time performer.

I had a lot of fun stitching together some of the many highlights from this Season 3 so far, in a 10 minute compilation in which I've included clips from every full episode in 2023 so far! It’s time for my summer break, but the podcast will be back September 2nd with a special episode with two composers who are life partners and also work together with Hans Zimmer at Bleeding Fingers Music. Anže Rozman and Kara Talve will inspire you with both the music of Prehistoric Planet and their personal stories, insights and compositions.

Although Madeline’s teaching is aimed primarily at classical pianists and other musicians, I find that much of what she talks about will resonate for everybody trying to get in touch with their emotions, their connection to beauty and meaning, and their experience of being in their bodies.

Ineke Vandoorn is a wonderfully expressive prizewinning jazz vocalist, author, composer and educator. During the recording of this episode Ineke performed 3 times, and also check out the timestamps for the many topics we covered.

I really enjoyed my conversation with the inspiring multi-style violinist Gina Burgess. During the episode she plays a couple of her original tunes, and at the end we did an improv back-and-forth across our Zoom call. It was really inspiring hearing about her journey through a severe overuse injury as a Classical violinist through to re-learning the violin in different styles, learning to improvise and compose, and also how she teaches improvisation to children.

Gina is a founding member of the Iqaluit-based Arctic rock band The Jerry Cans, is a four-time ECMA award winner with the band Gypsophilia, she fronts her own klezmer band Der Heisser, and is a regular collaborator in flamenco and Arabic music ensembles. Gina has toured Europe twice over with Tim Crabtree’s atmospheric ensemble; Paper Beat Scissors, and with folk-pop artist Gabrielle Papillon. Along with The Jerry Cans, Gina has performed and conducted youth workshops in Canada, Australia, Greenland, New Zealand, and Europe. https://www.ginaburgessmusic.com/ Instagram @ginaburgess.violin Facebook Gina Burgess Music