316: Ben Sidran - Jazz and Modernism

When I arrived in Palm Springs last month, a few days before the concert-lecture I was to play with my father, Ben Sidran, I found him surrounded by months of research notes, trying to wrestle his ideas into something coherent. The performance was part of the Palm Springs International Jazz Festival during the city's annual Modernism Week, and it grew out of an earlier program we presented at Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin. What began as a playful idea about the relationship between architecture and music gradually expanded into a deeper exploration of the natural structures that shape both. Along the way we found ourselves diving into the harmonic series, overtones, Fibonacci sequence, and the physics of vibration, asking how these natural phenomena influence the way we hear rhythm, harmony, and beauty. Drawing on conversations with musicians like Gil Goldstein, Howard Levy, and Jacob Collier, the episode is part personal story, part philosophical inquiry, and part behind-the-scenes look at how creative work actually gets made. And how, in the end, even the most abstract ideas often begin the same way: with a gig.

You can listen to 316: Ben Sidran - Jazz and Modernism online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

316: Ben Sidran - Jazz and Modernism is an episode from The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran by Leo Sidran.

This episode is 59:43 long.

This episode was published on Mar 11, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from The Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.