Improv Exchange Podcast

• Episode #179: Lori Williams

  Acclaimed international Jazz vocalist Lori Williams has a most impressive resume as a performing artist, veteran music educator, songwriter, producer, musical theater actress, radio host, business owner/founder (PositiveMusicPM.org), and artist-in-residence with over 30 years of experience. Her annual vocal jazz tour and performance at music festivals have taken her to Europe (Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Slovenia, Russia, Switzerland, Italy, Czech Republic, and Ukraine), Japan,  The Caribbean (including Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Curaçao, St. Lucia, Turks and Caicos, et. al), Mexico, and across the United States (performing at venues and festivals like The Atlanta Jazz Festivals, Berks Jazz Festival, The Birchmere, Birdland - Hamburg, Blues Alley, Blue Note Hawaii, Capital Jazz Fest/Cruise, City Winery, Disney’s Pleasure Island, Gulf Coast Summer Jazz Festival, JazzFestBRNO, JazzHRAM, Jazzkeller - Esslingen, Jazzland - Vienna, The Kennedy Center, Keystone Korner, Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival, Myrtle Beach Jazz Festival, Rams Head Live, Rehoboth Beach Jazz Festival, Riviera Maya Jazz Festival, Scullers Jazz, Spivey Hall, Trieste Loves Jazz, and more). Her vocal jazz artist residencies have allowed her to work with and mentor students on college campuses in the USA and abroad. As a veteran vocal music educator and private vocal coach, Lori's received many honors for her contributions to the arts, including The 2025 South Arts Jazz Road Award, The Atlanta Chapter of the National Hampton Alumni Association’s 2023 Excellence in Arts and Entertainment Award, Outstanding Music Teacher in the October 2000 issue of Teaching Music, the 2007 Superintendent's Arts Teacher of the Year, and the 2010 Vincent E. Reed Teacher of the Year. Lori was nominated for a 2014 Helen Hayes Award as an Outstanding Lead Actress in a Resident Musical for her role as Ella Fitzgerald. Lori has received letters of recognition for her performances by President Joseph Biden (wherein he wrote that Lori Williams has "the voice of an angel…absolutely amazing"), Speaker of the House John Boehner, and Senator C. Anthony Muse.  Immersed in traditional jazz from an early age (earning a B.A. in Mass Media Arts from Hampton University, attending the Jazz Studies Program at The University of the District of Columbia, and currently working on her Master’s degree in Music - Jazz Studies at Georgia State University), Lori Williams hosts a weekly radio program on JazzRadioWETF.org -  "Collector's Choice With Lori Williams". Her weekly broadcast highlights women in jazz, the international scene and young performers dedicated to the roots and traditions of the music. Lori is also the producer and host of Sunday Jazz Lounge at St. James Live! jazz club in Atlanta, Georgia (stjamesliveatl.com). For over three decades, Lori Williams has had the honor of working with many notable artists as lead / background / studio session / guest vocalist including Oleta Adams, Marcus Adams, Yolanda Adams, Nikita Agafonov, David Archuleta, Marcos Ariel, Rob Bargad, Regina Belle, Eric Benet, The Blackbyrds, Michael Bowie, Willie Bradley, Karen Briggs, Norman Brown, Tom Browne, Peabo Bryson, Chuck Brown, Wayne Bruce, Jerry Butler, Jonathan Butler, Paul Carr, Terri Lyne Carrington, TC Carson, Gene Chandler, Renato Chicco, Stanley Clarke, Nick Colionne, Collaboration, Michael Colyar, Adrian Crutchfield, John Davis, John Di Martino, Will Downing, Joris Dudli, George Duke, Nathan East, Rodney M. Edge, Troy Sol Edler, Kevon Edmonds (After 7), Herb Fame, Jorel "JFLY" Flynn (HBIYD), Derrick Gardner, James Genus, Jazmin Ghent,  Tres Gilbert, Savion Glover, Chelsey Green, Slide Hampton, Winard Harper, Christian Havel, Walter Hawkins, Norbert Heger, Howard Hewett, Dr. W. Weldon Hill, Tony Hightower, Corcoran Holt, William Hubbard, Daryl Hunt, Yoron Israel, Jessy J, Al Johnson and The A-Team, Allyn Johnson (Divine Order), Marcus Johnson, Stanley Jordan, Jackiem Joyner, Michael Keul, Kindred the Family Soul, Ben E. King, James King, Anatoliy Kirnichnyy, Antoine Knight, Yishai Knoll, Saltman Knowles Group, Ignat Kravtsov, Rayshun LaMarr, Lavahi, Evgeny Lebedev, Alex Malheiros (Azymuth), Jimmy Masters, Maysa, Daniel McClain (After 7), Frank McComb, Marion Meadows, Najee, Jimmy Masters, Nathan Mitchell, Ed Neumeister, Marat Nikolaev, Milan Nikolic, Julia Nixon, Daniel Nösig, Antonio Parker, Phil Perry, Robert E. Person, Anne Phillips, Benjie Porecki, Lloyd Price, Chuck Redd, Robert Redd, Althea Rene, Anton Revnyuk, Lenny Robinson, Gino Rosaria, Ellie Saitoh and The Love Tambourines, Erwin Schmidt, Sylver Logan Sharp, Avery Sharpe, Art Sherrod, Oli Silk, Brian Simpson, Dick Smith, John Toomey, Tony Terry, Unit 3 Deep, Gerald Veasley, Chris Walker, Kevin Walker, Kim Waters, Doug Weiss, Anthony Wellington, Matthew Whitaker, Roz White, Bernhard Wiesinger (Poysdorf All-Stars), Vesta Williams, Larry M. Wilson,  Angela Winbush, Sherry Winston, David Ylvisaker, Frederic Yonnet, et.al.  Lori Williams is the proud mother of two exceptionally talented and compassionate remarkable young adults — Lauren V. Highsmith (LAVAHI.me) and Yusef Khalil Chisholm - who inspire her daily with their creativity, passion, and accomplishments. She is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity, and the Recording Academy.

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• Episode #178: Frank Swart

  Frank Swart was born and raised in Boston. He grew up hearing the big band swing records and classic Broadway show albums that were in his parent’s record collection, along with the music that his sister (who was ten years older) listened to including the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, and Led Zeppelin. He also developed a love for Miles Davis’ 1970s recordings, the spiritual Jazz of John and Alice Coltrane, and the deep soul and blues of Chess and Stax records. After some ungratifying drum lessons, when he was 13, his sister bought him a bass. “I was able to play it immediately, learned some riffs from a guitarist, and was soon practicing eight hours a day.” As a teenager, he worked with rock, blues, and acid funk bands. Very interested in making recordings, Swart rented a recording studio in the basement of a hair salon on the graveyard shift and taught himself how to engineer and produce records.      After meeting his future wife and deciding to leave Boston, he spent periods living and working in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Nashville where he led the experimental jam band Funkwrench (which is a nickname for a bass). He engineered the first Pixies demos, worked with Patty Griffin off and on for 17 years, recorded with Morphine, produced and performed with cult underground art-rock band Billy Nayer Show, was part of the acid jazz group Junk/Post Junk Trio, was a founding member of the psychedelic electric blues trio SIMO, and recorded and toured with such artists as Norah Jones, The Indigo Girls, John Hiatt, and Buddy Miller. After settling back in San Francisco in 2017, Swart and publisher-producer Brian Brinkerhoff founded the Need To Know label, Skunkworks Studios, and Funkwrench Blues. Utilizing Swart’s instrumental blues-oriented compositions and such talents as guitarist Rick Kirch (who worked with John Lee Hooker) and a variety of drummers, they have made recordings with over 200 notable artists. A partial list includes Guitar Shorty, Cash McCall, Fareed Haque, Jim Campilongo, John Hammond, Sonny Landreth, John Primer, Albert Lee, Vieux Farke Toure, Mr. Sipp, Tommy Castro, and Duke Robillard but that only hints at the wide variety of performers. Swart will release his newest endeavor, Funkwrench Blues—Mischief In The Musitorium, in the summer of 2025. The album features collaborations with Lenny White, Vernon Reid, Donald Harrison, Nduduzo Makhatini, Jason Marsalis, Joseph Bowie, and more.

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• Episode #177: Heather Ward

  Heather Ward has recently released her second album, Gilded & Silver. Her debut album, Honeysweet was released in May 2024. She is Canadian but has been based in Seattle since 1997. She attended art school, but performing at gallery openings led her to music studies at Vancouver Community College and then Capilano University for a degree in Jazz Performance. She has attended the International Jazz Workshop and the first Jazz Vocalist workshop at the Banff Center for the Arts, and Vancouver International Jazz Orchestra Workshops, working with greats such as Hugh Fraser, Sheila Jordan and Jay Clayton. Heather has attended Centrum Jazz Port Townsend Programs, and twice performed in Vancouver’s DuMaurier International Jazz Festival. She teaches private voice lessons as a member of NATS and performs in jazz venues, cabarets and theater in Seattle.

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• Episode #176: Diego Pinera

  Diego Pinera was born 1981 in Montevideo, Uruguay and has lived in Germany since 2003. He studied drumming at the Berklee College of Music (USA), at the University of Music in Havana (Cuba) and at the University of Music and Theater in Leipzig (Germany). Pinera’s encounters with Latin American music, and with jazz in all its breadth, have led him to develop an unmistakable style. Through the combination of his advanced conception of rhythm, a jazz sound with a Latin touch, and the freedom of improvisation his strong character comes across vividly. In Pinera´s compositions there is musical complexity and virtuosity in abundance imbued with great subtlety and his love to odd meter grooves. In Uruguay he recorded with the Diego Pinera Trio the album “Buscando” under the Perro Andaluz label. Back in Germany he founded the Berlin Quartet and released in 2010 “Reflexiones” featuring Tony Lakatos. In 2014 the Jazz Thing Next Generation Series “Strange Ways” followed. In May 2016 he went on the cd release tour for “My Picture” with Donny McCaslin and Phil Donkin. In 2017 Diego Pinera received as bandleader and composer the prestigious prize ECHO Jazz for his album “My picture” in the category drums/ percussion national, recorded in New York with Mark Turner and Ben Street. His first ACT music album “Despertando” was released 2018 and his next ACT album "Odd Wisdom" feat. Donny McCaslin has been considerated for the finalist of the GRAMMY Music Awards 2021. With this project he played at the Jazzbaltica 2022, live recorded by ZDF. In November 2022 he has been invited to play in 30th anniversary event of ACT at the Berlin Philharmonic together with Wolfgang Haffner, Nils Landgren and many more artists. Diego Pinera won the German award Deutscher Jazzpreis 2023 for „BestArrangement of the Year“ of Béla Bartók’s String Quartet No. 3, Sz. 85 and was also nominated for the best composition of the year with „Through Hell“. Since 2022 he has taught at the University of Music Dresden "Carl Maria von Weber" and since 2023 at the University of applied sciences Osnabrück. He is also a first-call session/ sideman/ clinician and has been touring the world with many different settings and bands. He played with musicians like Donny McCaslin, Mark Turner, Ben Monder, Scott Colley and Ben Street.  ​Winner of the German Award "Deutsche Jazzpreis 2023"for "Best Arrangement of the year", Diego recorded with John Patitucci and Dave Kikosko in NY 2024 and is a teacher and part of the Jazzfaculty of the University of Music in Dresden and Osnabruck.

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• Episode #175 - Keith Lamar & Albert Marques

  In 1989, Keith LaMar (aka Bomani Shakur) was sent to prison at age 19 for murder. He had been living in Cleveland, Ohio, where he sold drugs as a means of survival in the Crack-infested streets he knew as home. On a day that would forever change his life, Keith was robbed at gunpoint and exchanged gunfire with his robbers. He was shot twice in his legs and hit one of the other men in the chest. That young man, one a childhood friend, died. Keith pled guilty and was sent to prison for 18 years-to-life. Four years later, Keith was attempting to put together the broken pieces of his life at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, hoping for another chance at life. It was an Easter Sunday, and the weather had just turned warmer; Keith and about 400 other men were outside exercising in the rec-yard when commotion broke out inside and it became clear that some type of protest was underway. Keith made a quick decision to slip inside for a few minutes to secure his personal belongings (since his cell assignment was in the area being taken over). Once back out in the yard, he and the others waited to see what would transpire, watching as the bodies of several men were dumped onto the yard. As Easter came to an end, the Ohio State Highway Patrol rounded up those on the yard and secured them into another part of the facility. Prison records prove that Keith was among them. Though no one could have predicted what exactly was happening, or how it would all result, an 11-day siege ensued. In the end, nine inmates and one guard ultimately lost their lives. When the dust began to settle, the State of Ohio needed someone on whom to pin several of the early inmate deaths. This is where Keith’s troubles began… A few months later, several prisoners were enticed with the promise of early paroles and/or dropped charges if only they would come up with a reasonable story to help the State sweep up the “mess” at their out-of-control prison. They determined Keith would be the fall guy, and they pointed their fingers at him. Thus, to make it all come together convincingly, the prosecution withheld actual confessions from his defense, as well as eyewitness statements that contradicted their fabricated version of events. In spite of zero DNA or forensic evidence, they moved forward with their accusations against Keith. In fact, they made sure his trial would be racially biased in their favor by calling for the removal of the few potential black jurors, and by holding his trial in an all-white county in southern Ohio. In spite of having no motive to kill anyone, no actual proof connecting him, nor any affiliation with any of the groups organizing the uprising, the jury didn’t take long to find Keith LaMar guilty of the murder of five of the inmates. He was sentenced to death. Albert Marquès is a pianist, composer, and political activist from a working class, industrial town outside of Barcelona, where he worked in factories through school. A member of a Catalan anti-capitalist organization as a teenager, he narrowly escaped being detained for his activism. Influenced by the local punk scene, as well as jazz recordings of musicians like Chick Corea, Brad Mehldau, Michel Camilo and Herbie Hancock, he was self-taught until he attended Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu. After graduation, he made two pivotal trips which changed his life, spending a month in the West Bank in Palestine and a month in Cuba. During his four years in Barcelona, he played with the best musicians of the scene, such as Marc Miralta, thanks to his unique, non-academic sound. Upon graduating, he moved to Paris, where he worked in a McDonald’s until he learned French. In Paris, he played with musicians such as Remi Vignolo and Pierre Perchaud, and became the pianist in African American drummer Leon Parker’s quartet. At 25, Albert moved to New York City, without knowing even one person, to play jazz. After a year and a half working as a waiter and going to jam sessions every night, he met his mentor Arturo O'Farrill, who gave him his own baby grand piano. In addition to his musical influence and encouragement, O’Farrill hired him to teach with his organization, the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, a non-profit that gives free Latin jazz music lessons in the most disadvantaged New York City public schools. Albert also plays and collaborates with his sons, Adam and Zack O’Farrill. In 2014, he married the sculptor Mia Pearlman, with whom he has two children, Aviva and Sol. It is in New York that he finally combined his biggest influences: contemporary jazz, flamenco, Afro Cuban music and social justice by creating Freedom First. He has recorded four albums as a band leader, and regularly collaborates with rhythm master Ari Hoenig, Spanish flamenco singer and saxophonist Antonio Lizana, and other American and European musicians. ​Marques is the Music Director at the Institute for Collaborative Education in NY, a progressive, public middle and high school in downtown Manhattan.

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