Time Sensitive14 Touko 2025

Billy Martin on Finding Harmony in Rhythm and Life

The drummer and percussionist Billy Martin, whose name many Time Sensitive listeners may recognize—he created the Time Sensitive theme song—defies any boxed-in or limiting definitions of his work. Best known as a member of the band Medeski Martin & Wood (MMW), he’s spent the past three-plus decades making experimental, boundary-pushing, and uncategorizable instrumental jazz-funk-groove music, shaping sounds that feel as expansive as they are definitive and distinctive. Across all his artistic output, Martin continually, meditatively searches for harmony. He is also a composer, a teacher, a visual artist, and a builder and craftsman. His expansive creative practice comes most alive at his home in Englewood, New Jersey, where he has cultivated a bamboo garden, crafted his own Japanese-style teahouse, and constructed a music studio. Martin is someone for whom rhythm is not just something heard, but also seen and felt.

On the episode, he talks about his MMW journey at length, his concept of “rhythmic harmony,” and why he views sound creation as a sacred act.

Special thanks to our Season 11 presenting sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

Billy Martin

[05:56] Medeski Martin & Wood

[05:56] John Medeski

[05:56] Chris Wood

[05:56] “Not Not Jazz” (2024)

[08:36] Iggy Pop’s “Avenue B” (1999)

[08:36] Don Was

[09:51] “The Lover” (1995)

[09:51] “Friday Afternoon in the Universe” (1995)

[09:51] “Old Angel Midnight” (1973) by Jack Kerouac

[12:08] Ra-Kalam Bob Moses

[12:08] John Scofield

[12:08] David Baker

[14:21] “Shuck It Up” (1993)

[14:21] “It’s a Jungle in Here” (1993)

[16:36] “Latin Shuffle” (1998)

[16:36] “Combustication” (1998)

[16:36] Frankie Malabe

[16:36] Art Blakey

[31:23] Thelonious Monk

[31:23] “Life on Drums” (2011)

[35:43] John Bonham

[35:43] Charlie Watts

[35:43] Stewart Copeland

[35:43] Elvin Jones

[35:43] Max Roach

[35:43] Danny Richmond

[35:43] Charles Mingus

[35:43] Jack DeJohnette

[35:43] Joe Morello

[35:43] Roy Haynes

[35:43] Stan Getz

[35:43] Airto Moreira

[35:43] Naná Vasconcelos

[35:43] Babatunde Olatunji

[37:06] Gus Johnson

[37:06] “Whatever Happened to Gus” (1998)

[37:06] Steve Cannon

[38:05] “Chubb Sub” (1995)

[38:05] ”Uncle Chubb” (1992)

[43:53] “Shack-man” (1996)

[44:18] “Drumming Birds” (2004)

[51:59] “Bamboo Rainsticks” (1999)

[51:59] Amulet Records

[56:58] Creative Music Studio

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(163)

Simon Critchley on Giving Up the Fantasy of Mastery

Who better to bring remarkable clarity to the density of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time than the British philosopher and New School professor Simon Critchley? After decades spent studying and teach...

7 Loka 1h 37min

Jacques Pépin on “Taste Memory” and a Life in the Kitchen

Jacques Pépin has long found beauty in simplicity—a glass of warm milk, a freshly sliced lemon, a garden-ripe tomato—and in transmitting knowledge from one hand to the next. Now 90, the French chef, a...

30 Syys 1h 14min

Iris van Herpen on Visualizing the Invisible Through Haute Couture

Iris van Herpen’s boundary-defying, otherworldly work exists somewhere between couture, sculpture, science, technology, architecture, and nature. For nearly two decades, the Dutch fashion designer has...

16 Syys 1h 19min

Dries Van Noten on the Meaning Found in Making

Dries Van Noten’s lifelong fascination with craft and making runs deep. He grew up in a multigenerational family of retailers and tailors in Antwerp, and in the 1980s, he was part of the famed avant-g...

24 Kesä 59min

Felix Burrichter on Print’s Enduring Power in the Algorithmic Age

Through PIN–UP, the German-born, New York–based editor, curator, and founder Felix Burrichter continues to expand the possibilities of what an architecture magazine can be. He constructs intuitive bri...

17 Kesä 1h 20min

Maria Popova on the Role of Chance in Shaping Our Lives

Through her multifaceted work, the Bulgarian-born, Brooklyn-based writer, reader, and researcher Maria Popova, founder of the “free, ad-free, A.I.-free, fully human” website and newsletter The Margina...

10 Kesä 58min

Sheila Hicks on Life as a Series of Portals

For our latest “site-specific” episode of Time Sensitive, Spencer meets Sheila Hicks inside her courtyard in Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood, where she has called home for more than 60 yea...

27 Touko 1h 4min

Valerie June on Joy as a Form of Resistance

The singer-songwriter Valerie June has a gift for writing contemporary songs that feel timeless and as though they could also have existed at various points across the past century. Her expansive laye...

13 Touko 1h 13min