Photo by Darci Fontenot
Ed Kornhauser and Ian Tordella
Ian Tordella and Ed Kornhauser are best known for being fixtures of San Diego’s jazz scene. But the two musicians also started a new project this year to help spread the word about jazz in San Diego, the San Diego Sessions podcast. Each episode focuses on a different musician in town, with clips of and discussions about their original music. It’s the second time Tordella’s hosted a podcast in town, though he says there’s already more interest in San Diego Sessions than his previous attempt.
“Back in 2011, 2012 I had a podcast called Dirty Thursdays, where local musicians would come into the studio and play three songs and talk about them,” he says. “But back then, not as many people really were listening to podcasts. Lately, the jazz scene has just exploded. It seemed like the right time to start documenting the scene.”
So far, guests on San Diego Sessions have included Joshua White, Nathan Hubbard and Robert Dove, and Tordella has a list of others he’d like to have on. He also has some ideas for ways to keep it interesting.
“This is mostly spotlighting people’s recorded music,” he says. “We do have plans to do a couple live shows, or a recorded-with-a-live-audience show. But those are still in the works.”
The emphasis of the show is original music, which isn’t always the focus of jazz, given its history of interpreting standards. But Tordella says that he and Kornhauser are enthusiastic about highlighting jazz composers, and want to help keep that creativity alive.
“The biggest part of this is just encouraging musicians to keep working on original music,” he says. “A lot of jazz musicians like to play music from the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it’s a great tradition—I love that stuff. But I think it’s really important to push original material.”