This is episode 4 of the Origins Podcast Series featuring bassist and composer, Hilliard Greene. Mr. Greene has been active on the New York music scene since 1987. He studied at the University of Northern Iowa and at Berklee College of Music in Boston prior to arriving in New York. He is a versatile player, having recorded with a wide variety of musicians ranging from Jimmy Scott to Charles Gayle and he worked as Cecil Taylor’s concert master for the group Phtongos. He has performed across North America, Europe, the Caribbean, and South America. In recent years, he formed the In&Out Band, the ZigZag Quartet, and he recently released The Jazz Expressions on the Unseen Rain record label, a solo bass recording featuring Negro Spirituals related to the Underground Railroad. In 2020, he was awarded the Bronx Council of the Arts BRIO Award. The track we opened with is “Love Speaks” with pianist Steve Hudson’s trio with Mr. Greene on bass and Jerome Jennings on drums. The interview included in this episode was recorded on June 22, 2022.

This inaugural episode of the New York Live podcast series features reeds and woodwinds player Sabir Mateen. Mr. Mateen has been a key figure in free jazz since his emergence in the 1970s. Born in Philadelphia in 1951, he first became known as a member of Horace Tapscott’s Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra in Los Angeles in the early 1970s. He later returned to Philadelphia where he played regularly until he moved to New York in 1989. The early years of his work are woefully under-recorded, but Mr. Mateen began to have more recording opportunities from the mid-1990s onwards. He first gained critical attention for his contributions to the band TEST with Daniel Carter, Matthew Heyner, and Tom Bruno from the mid-1990s onwards and has since worked extensively with figures such as Marc Edwards, William Hooker, Raphe Malik, William Parker, Matthew Shipp, Alan Silva, Steve Swell, and the band Earth People, among many others. Mr. Mateen currently lives in Italy. The interview featured in this episode was recorded on October 31, 2023, and was conducted in non-ideal conditions near a construction site with some background noise. However, the story Mr. Mateen tells is vital and is unlike any other.

This episode focuses on bassoonist and composer, Karen Borca. Ms. Borca has been active on the New York music scene since the 1970s. She details her early years in northern Wisconsin where she first studied music and how she met pianist Cecil Taylor at the University of Wisconsin in 1970. She joined his circle of improvisers, which included Jimmy Lyons, Andrew Cyrille, and many others. She joined Taylor at Antioch College and then moved to New York City where she joined the community of musicians. Her work has transformed the bassoon as an improvisatory instrument. The interview included in this episode was recorded on October 15, 2020.