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The Late Set
Biweekly

Jazz is a conversation — and that’s what The Late Set is all about. Nate Chinen and Josh Jackson convene every two weeks for straight talk and in-depth interviews with featured guests. Just like a hang at the end of the gig, in the back of the club, it’s direct, unfiltered and illuminating, revealing the music and its culture in a deeper light.

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Latest Episodes
  • When Chris Speed formed Yeah No in the late 1990s, there was no lane for its hybrid style. Things are different now for Speed and his bandmates — trumpeter Cuong Vu, bassist Skúli Sverrisson, and drummer Jim Black — but their rapport is as deep and distinctive as ever. Before a reunion show at Solar Myth, Speed and Black sat down with Nate Chinen to talk about that journey, and share their views on the current scene.
  • Miles Davis is a source of endless fascination — so for his centennial episode, we decided to sit down and compare highlights, including some of the less celebrated turns and pivots in a famously forward-thinking career.
  • For more than 25 years, bassist Carlos Henriquez has been the beating heart in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. He joins us to talk about his dynamite new album, 'Monk con Clave.'
  • We're getting ready to celebrate International Jazz Day, at a moment of roiling global tensions. It feels like a great time to connect with Kresten Osgood — a Danish drummer, composer and commentator, host of the podcast Dangerous Sounds.
  • Tomeka Reid embraces the cello’s full range—earthy to ethereal—on dance! skip! hop!. In our studio, she talks dance, AACM mentors, early inspirations, and her work as an educator and advocate.
  • In the hands of Béla Fleck, a banjo is a skeleton key, capable of unlocking almost any musical door. For this episode, he joins us in the banjo parlor at Vintage Instruments to talk musical legacies, personal histories, and how his perspective has changed (and how it hasn’t) over the course of a nearly five-decade career.
  • Mark Turner is a modern master, a tenor saxophonist whose influence on the jazz tradition can hardly be overstated. So we're thrilled to talk with him about his new ECM album, Patternmaster, and some of the speculative fiction (and actual music) that inspired it.
  • Search high and low, in this world and beyond, and you won't ever find another Sun Ra. So we're excited about the broadcast premiere of Sun Ra: Do the Impossible on PBS. Our own Nate Chinen is a commentator in the film — and so is our guest this episode, the author and critic Marcus J. Moore, who brings a multilayered appreciation of Sun Ra's artistry to our conversation. Space is the Place!
  • How do we feel about this year’s Grammy Awards? We'll attempt to answer that question before diving deep into a conversation with bassist Dezron Douglas, conducted onstage before a recent quartet show at Solar Myth.