Gerry Bryant is a brilliant classically-trained pianist, composer, and arranger. He came from a poor inner-city Cleveland neighbourhood, and was givin an opportunity to attend the prestigious Phillips Academy, then Harvard university. He went on to get an MBA and a law degree, all the while continuing the expansion of his knowledge of different styles of music, and forming his jazz group Pocketwatch. This episode partly focuses on his Composers album, with music of Florence Price and Thomas Wiggins who was known as Blind Tom to his slave masters. Gerry reflects on how access to a musical education changed his life, and how wonderful it has been to discover and champion Black composers. One of the musicians that Gerry has collaborated with many times is the wonderful and versatile violinist Mark Cargill, whose playing is also featured in this episode. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast, and I’ve also linked the transcript.

Thomas Cabaniss is a wonderful American composer of works for opera, theater, dance, film and the concert stage, and also a visionary Teaching Artist. He’s been a member of the faculty of the Julliard School since 1998, and leads the Lullaby Project at Carnegie Hall, serving young parents in shelters, hospitals and prisons with collaboratively created songs for their children. We talk about all this and much more, inluding his work creating Carnegie Hall’s Link Up. I was curious about these many facets to Thomas’ life as both a composer and educator, and you’ll find this episode has gorgeous, inspiring music , as well as great stories from his diverse career as a Teaching Artist, working with music educators, students of all ages, and meaningful outreach in the community. You’ll hear performances from pianists Michael Shinn and Jessica Chow Shinn, singer Joyce DiDonato, and towards the beginning of the episode you’ll hear some of Thomas’ great music for string quartet, performed by the Charleston Symphony String Quartet.