Adam Maness brings you the freshest releases of May 2026! 0:00 Intro 0:50 Jeff Parker https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/happy-today 3:45 Greg Hutchinson https://www.allmusic.com/album/kind-of-now-mw0004778588 6:15 Chris Potter https://chrispotterjazz.bandcamp.com/album/alive-with-ghosts-today 9:09 New Jazz Underground https://www.allmusic.com/album/hoodies-mw0004791891 11:04 Virginia MacDonald https://virginiamacdonald.bandcamp.com/album/in-search-of 13:00 Harry Skoler https://harryskoler1.b...
Jun 01, 2026•24 min•Season 14Ep. 23
Sonny Rollins passed away this week at 95. Jazz pianists Peter and Adam are listening through the recordings that defined his career and made him one of the most influential musicians in jazz history. From his earliest bebop tunes to Saxophone Colossus to A Night at the Village Vanguard, they trace the arc of a player who kept raising the bar on himself even when the rest of the world thought he'd already cleared it. Plus - they talk through the legendary Williamsburg Bridge sabbatical: two year...
May 29, 2026•50 min•Season 14Ep. 22
Miles Davis's Kind of Blue is one of the greatest albums of all time - possibly THE greatest. But it's not perfect. In this special episode of You'll Hear It, jazz pianists Peter Martin and Adam Maness break down this classic record, track-by-track, to uncover why it has become so legendary. They dig into what's really going on in the music during this album's best moments: Miles's trumpet solo on "So What", Wynton Kelly's piano solo on "Freddie Freeloader", John Coltrane's entrance on "Blue in ...
May 25, 2026•1 hr 26 min•Season 14Ep. 21
Herbie Hancock's Thrust (1974) is one of the most influential jazz-funk records ever made. Peter Martin and Adam Maness break down the full album, track-by-track: Mike Clark's displaced backbeats, why Paul Jackson is such an unusual bass player and possibly the greatest Rhodes solo of all time. Plus - Adam shares a story about learning "Spank-A-Lee" at 16, and Peter tells us about meeting Paul Jackson for the first time. And ... is "Actual Proof" ACTUALLY the best track on the album? -----------...
May 18, 2026•1 hr•Season 14Ep. 20
Could Parliament be the most important band of the 1970s? Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin break down Parliament's 1975 masterpiece Mothership Connection track-by-track: Bootsy Collins bass lines that launched a thousand samples, grooves that lock you in and won't let go, and the New Orleans connection that George Clinton says started the whole thing. Plus: isolated bass and drums stems. You'll never hear Parliament the same way again. Chapters Legend: 🎧 Listening to a track 🎹 Music ...
May 11, 2026•53 min•Season 14Ep. 19
Join Adam Maness as he delves into the best new music released in April 2026 (ish). This month we're featuring the incredible microtonal Angine de Poitrine and many more!
May 07, 2026•19 min•Season 14Ep. 18
YHI + McBride = Ray Charles?! Christian McBride - bassist, Grammy winner and one of the greatest musical minds working today - joins Adam and Peter on You'll Hear It to share his desert island album. If you know Christian, you know that his musical hero is James Brown. But Christian isn't bringing a James Brown pick. Instead, he's bringing one from his hero's hero ... Ray Charles. This album was a risky move for Charles - unlike anything else he'd released at that time. At the peak of his power,...
May 04, 2026•1 hr 1 min•Season 14Ep. 17
Check out Adam’s course for more on Kid A and the harmony of Radiohead: https://osjazz.link/radiohead You've never heard Kid A like THIS. Jazz musicians Adam Maness and Peter Martin break down Radiohead's 2000 art rock MASTERPIECE track-by-track to uncover what's really happening in the music that makes this album so incredible. Why do we love Radiohead's Kid A so much? Watch to find out. PLUS - Jazz musicians play Radiohead's "Everything In Its Right Place". One shot, one take, no AI. FULL vide...
Apr 27, 2026•1 hr 28 min•Season 14Ep. 16
Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin' capture Miles Davis on one of music history's most remarkable upswings. He had recently become clean after a years-long heroin addiction that led to his exclusion from major record labels and clubs. And now, in 1956, he had a deal with Columbia - the Cadillac of record labels - and a band he loved: Red Garland on piano, Philly Joe Jones on drums, Paul Chambers on bass and John Coltrane playing the sax. In this episode of You'll Hear It, jazz pianists Pete...
Apr 20, 2026•1 hr 12 min•Season 14Ep. 15
Marvin Gaye's I Want You could be one of his greatest albums, and he didn't even write it. Producer Leon Ware wrote most of the songs for himself. Marvin Gaye was only supposed to record the title track. But he heard Leon playing a demo of the album one night and stayed up listening until morning. The next day, he asked Ware if he could have the whole thing. In this episode, Peter and Adam break down why the title track, "I Want You", might be one of his best songs, and whether the rest of the a...
Apr 13, 2026•1 hr 7 min•Season 14Ep. 14
Buena Vista Social Club: The album so good it's life-affirming. And it almost didn't happen. In 1996, an American musician landed in Cuba to record a music project with Malian musicians. But when they didn't show up, Ry Cooder and his producer, Juan de Marcos González, went looking for replacements. That's when they found Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer and Rubén González, who had seen their musical prime decades earlier in the 40s and 50s. Compay was nearing his 90s, and some believed he had die...
Apr 06, 2026•59 min•Season 14Ep. 13
What happens when you put three of jazz's biggest personalities in a studio for a day? You get Money Jungle: Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Max Roach. Can it work? Miles Davis hated it. Others revere it. And the story behind this album is WILD. It's perhaps the most tense album we've ever listened to. And this episode of You'll Hear It is possibly the most we have ever disagreed about an album! Listen for the music, the hot takes, or just to see what all the fuss is about. No matter your rea...
Mar 30, 2026•1 hr 12 min•Season 14Ep. 12
We're looking at the best jazz releases of March 2026! Listen with pianist Adam Maness as he breaks down and reacts to these great tracks. Start your free Open Studio trial for ALLLLL your jazz lesson needs: https://osjazz.link/yhi
Mar 27, 2026•25 min•Season 14Ep. 10
Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington: The musicians on this album were already legends when it came out in 1955. Each of them completely reinvented how people play their instruments. Drummer Kenny Clarke: the originator of so much of modern drumming language. Bass player Oscar Pettiford: possibly the greatest bass soloist in the history of the instrument. And then there's Monk, one of the singular greatest pianists of all time. And here they are playing the music of Duke Ellington: an untouchabl...
Mar 23, 2026•1 hr 6 min•Season 14Ep. 9
D'Angelo's Brown Sugar sounded like nothing else in 1995. R&B was slick, polished, and built for clubs. D'Angelo later said the "deeper consciousness" had gone out of contemporary music. Questlove later wrote that contemporary R&B had become "trite" and "soulless" ... and then there was Brown Sugar, D'Angelo's debut album. It sounded more like the '70s than the '90s. More like church than the club. On this episode of You'll Hear It, jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin go track by ...
Mar 16, 2026•1 hr 36 min•Season 14Ep. 8
Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) may be the most controversial album in jazz history, and one of the most important. In 1959, a broke musician from Fort Worth, Texas arrived in New York City with a plastic saxophone and a band that didn't play by the rules. And EVERYONE had an opinion about it. Jazz legends hated it. Miles Davis said Ornette was "all screwed up inside." Max Roach punched him in the mouth. Dizzy Gillespie said Ornette's music wasn't even jazz. Meanwhile, Leonard...
Mar 09, 2026•50 min•Season 14Ep. 7
Jazz pianists Adam Maness and Peter Martin dive into Music of My Mind, track-by-track, listening to isolated stems and breaking down the music theory behind the songs. Plus - we talk about TONTO, the one-ton synthesizer Stevie used to create this record. And we dig into the innovative ways Stevie and collaborators Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff mixed the album. Music of My Mind was the first of a five-album run that formed Stevie Wonder's Classic Period, including Talking Book (1972), Inner...
Mar 02, 2026•1 hr 39 min•Season 14Ep. 6
We're looking at the best jazz releases of February 2026! Listen with pianist Adam Maness as he breaks down and reacts to these great tracks. Start your free Open Studio trial for ALLLLL your jazz lesson needs: https://osjazz.link/yhi 00:00 - Intro 00:26 - In On It - Pat Metheny 02:20 - Circlesz - GENA 04:13 - Will You Walk A Little Faster - Holland, Stone, London Vocal Project 06:31 - La Sentencia - Melissa Aldana 08:55 - La Fiesta - Geoffrey Keezer & Tim Garland 10:58 - Oo Long! - The Tome...
Feb 27, 2026•18 min•Season 14Ep. 5
Charlie Parker was punk rock before there was punk rock. His bebop was underground music: subversive, intellectual, and a major departure from popular music of the day (think: Nat King Cole, The Andrews Sisters, Perry Como). He was an intellectual heavyweight, nearly untouchable in his technical ability and pushing music to places no one else was daring to go. So where did Charlie Parker with Strings, his most accessible album, come from? It's not Bird going commercial, like some have claimed. C...
Feb 23, 2026•1 hr 16 min•Season 14Ep. 4
Is Steely Dan's Gaucho more perfect than Aja? Maybe even ... too perfect? Two years in the studio. The greatest session musicians alive asked to play take after take after take until it was exactly right. And sometimes that STILL wasn't enough for Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. On today's episode of You'll Hear It, jazz pianists Peter Martin and Adam Maness are breaking down the 1980 album track by track: the jazz harmony hiding inside those smooth grooves, the abstract poetry of the lyrics, an...
Feb 16, 2026•1 hr 25 min•Season 14Ep. 3
The Impossible follow-up: Michael Jackson's 1987 album Bad. Five years after Thriller changed everything, Michael returned with a record that would become one of the best-selling of all time, win two Grammys, feature some of the greatest musicians in the world (hey, Stevie Wonder!) ... and somehow still gets called a letdown. We've covered two of Michael's albums produced by Quincy Jones: Off the Wall and Thriller. What about Bad? Could it actually be better than its predecessor? Jazz pianists P...
Feb 09, 2026•1 hr 20 min•Season 14Ep. 2
Carole King’s Tapestry is so cozy, you'll want to hug it; sit with it. It sounds simple, warm, and totally unassuming. But it’s way more impressive than it seems at first. Adam and Peter break down what’s actually going on beneath the surface of Tapestry ... and what most people miss. Carole King was already an elite songwriter long before this album. You know Aretha Franklin's “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”? Carole wrote that. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by The Shirelles? She wrote t...
Feb 02, 2026•1 hr 27 min•Season 14Ep. 1
We're looking at the best jazz releases of January 2026! Listen with pianist Adam Maness as he breaks down and reacts to these great tracks. Start your free Open Studio trial for ALLLLL your jazz lesson needs: https://osjazz.link/yhi 00:00 - Intro 00:50 - Why Don't You - Sam Fribush, Corey Fonville, Charlie Hunter 03:09 - Talking Drum - Julian Lage 04:58 - Flim - Winderman, Colman, Kimock 06:53 - Nacho Supreme - Motion II 08:51 - Wisdom Is Eternal (For Barry Harris) 10:49 - Unpersuadable Extern ...
Jan 31, 2026•20 min•Season 13Ep. 27
New episode drops February 2, 2026! Keep your eyes on the feed for episodes on artists like Carole King, Michael Jackson, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, Radiohead, Tears for Fears, D'Angelo and so much more!
Jan 26, 2026•2 min•Season 13Ep. 25
We're looking back at the best jazz releases of 2025. Listen with pianist Adam Maness as he breaks down and reacts to these great tracks. This is a new segment from the team behind You'll Hear It, and we're looking to continue this music discovery pod as a weekly series in 2026. Help us shape this series and leave us a comment with your feedback. Start your free Open Studio trial for ALLLLL your jazz lesson needs: https://osjazz.link/yhi 00:00 - The Best New Jazz of 2025 00:55 - "Spiral Dance" -...
Dec 29, 2025•35 min•Season 13Ep. 22
What does it really mean to live a musical life? As we look ahead to 2026, Adam and Peter talk about music as a way of being. Not a checklist, or a finish line, or something reserved for “professionals.” They share why they believe everyone is a musician, and why taste and curiosity matter more than optimization. Whether you're a musician, or a lover of music, anyone can lead a musical life. Start your free Open Studio trial for ALLLLL your jazz lesson needs: https://osjazz.link/yhi 00:00 - How ...
Dec 26, 2025•31 min•Season 13Ep. 24
Prince's Sign O' the Times is one of our most requested albums at You'll Hear It. But, there is a certain window of millennial that doesn't really "get" Prince. If that’s you, this episode is your on ramp into his music. We start with Prince's earliest albums, tracing his incredible run from 1978 through to 1986. By the time we hit 1987 (around the time our dear mid-millennials were born), you can hear exactly why Sign O’ the Times has become so beloved by critics and music-lovers alike. If you’...
Dec 22, 2025•1 hr 30 min•Season 13Ep. 23
Could this be peak Frank? Sinatra at the Sands captures the energy, the cool, and the incredible voice that made this crooner so iconic. Backed by the Count Basie Orchestra with arrangements by a young Quincy Jones, this live album still swings 60 years later! Sinatra at the Sands was recorded at a moment when Sinatra was emerging from a slump. Rock and roll dominated the airwaves, the Beatles were redefining popular music and crooning just wasn't cool anymore. But this album, recorded live in V...
Dec 15, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 13Ep. 21
How much do you know about Peter Martin? In this conversation with Kirk Hamilton of the Strong Songs podcast, Peter shares his musical influences and trajectory as a young jazz pianist. He brings us right back to the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s with stories of meeting Wynton Marsalis, and playing with jazz legends like Betty Carter, Roy Hargrove and Joshua Redman. Plus, he shares his take on jazz education, the marathon runner's mindset and why anyone and everyone can play music. Check out the Strong S...
Dec 08, 2025•1 hr 27 min•Season 13Ep. 20
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was one of the BIGGEST records of the 90s. When you sell 20 million records, like Lauryn Hill did, you're into mass market territory; you're selling records all over the world and reaching across genres. With Miseducation , Lauryn Hill struck a nerve with humanity. How did she do it? As you'll hear in this episode, the album sounded unlike other chart-topping hits at the time. It features tons of acoustic instruments, beautiful chord progressions, Stevie Wonder vi...
Dec 01, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 13Ep. 19
