May 26, 2026

Miles Davis spent his life searching. He changed the sound of jazz repeatedly, assembling generations of musicians around him and pushing constantly toward something new. Few artists loom so large over the history of the music.

To mark what would have been his 100th birthday today, I’m revisiting a rare 1986...

Jan 8, 2026

Kurt Elling returns for a wide-ranging conversation about vocation, gratitude, and what it means to be in service of the music.

Elling first appeared on The Third Story nearly ten years ago, already one of the most celebrated singers of his generation and still deeply focused on what he calls “the work I haven’t...

Dec 8, 2025

Guitarist, bassist, composer Phil Upchurch died on November 23, and with his passing the music world lost one of its true “musician’s musicians.” Upchurch played on more than a thousand recordings  — from Michael Jackson, Donny Hathaway, Chaka Khan, Curtis Mayfield, and George Benson to Jimmy Reed, the Staples...

Nov 10, 2025

Singer and composer Theo Bleckmann has spent his career between categories - jazz and avant-garde, improvisation and composition, structure and discovery. Born in Germany, he began as a boy soprano and figure skater before discovering jazz and moving to New York to study with Sheila Jordan. Since then, he’s built...

Oct 19, 2025

The Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett is one of the most iconic recordings in jazz history — a completely improvised solo piano performance, recorded in 1975, that became both the best-selling solo album and the best-selling piano album of all time. And yet, the concert almost didn’t happen.

The new film Köln 75,...