The innovative sitarist and composer Mohamed Assani is featured in this episode, linked here is the podcast, video and transcript. Mohamed demonstrates on both sitar and tabla, speaks to me both about his own journey as a musician and about the history of the sitar and South Asian music. In this conversation a couple of compositions from his album Wayfinder are featured. Wayfinder inco rporates a range of stylistic influences, including South Asian Classical, Middle Eastern, jazz, funk, Western Classical, ambient & electronic music. Mohamed shares his perspectives as an educator and creator: “So sitar to me will always be a challenge, right? Music is bigger than us, I believe. So if I can do something like that, what do I learn from it? It just gives me a lot of things to reflect about me as a person. So you start having these kinds of conversation with yourself, and once you accept that whoever you are is going to show on the stage, and that happens, right? So then maybe you start fine tuning some aspects of yourself.”

The Canadian performer and composer Jack Hui Litster has developed a satisfying creative career after some interesting twists and turns. In this episode, you’ll learn about his experiences as a jazz drummer, his pivot into international development, and his path back to composing, producing and recording music in different styles. There is a lot of music featured in the episode as well; the podcast, video and transcript are all linked here.

Jah’Mila: Rooted in Reggae and Connecting with New Audiences

Linked here are the podcast, video and transcript for this in-depth interview with the Reggae artist Jah’Mila which also features tracks from her album Roots Girl.

Kara Talve and Anže Rozman are composers with Bleeding Fingers Music and together wrote with Hans Zimmer the acclaimed score to the incredible tv series Prehistoric Planet. I was so impressed by this series, and the first part of this episode digs into the unique instruments that were created for this powerful score, and the other part of this episode is a personal and in-depth conversation with Kara and Anže about their lives. They shared their individual stories about challenges, mentors, and have great advice for younger composers. You can listen to the podcast, watch the video, read the transcript and check out the bonus tracks, all linked here.