My parents loved to dance, and so I grew up in a home filled with the music of Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman. In high school, my interest in jazz moved from swing to the great musicians who were changing the music world at the time – Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk. I was an impressionable teenager, and their music entered my heart and settled in my bones.

My love of, and interest in, jazz has only grown over time. For the past 20 years, I’ve had the good fortune to count as a friend the noted jazz pianist Ben Sidran. Ben is perhaps best known for the jazz series he created, Sidran on Record, for National Public Radio. This series, which featured interviews with the jazz masters of our time, ran on NPR from 1984 to 1990.

Those thoughtful interviews have been collected into a CD set titled, Talking Jazz: an Oral History. More than 40 conversations provide insight into life philosophies, influences, and playing styles. It is amazing and wonderful to hear the actual voices of the musicians I have worshipped from afar for so many years.

The conversations in Talking Jazz reveal that musicians, like their counterparts in the world of visual art, often use their chosen instruments to explore a set of experiences or focus on a particular attitude. Truly talented artists of any kind succeed in drawing others into their thinking and awakening a range of powerful ideas.