The Buzz: The JJA Podcast

For this episode ofThe Buzz, JJA President Emeritus Howard Mandel speaks with Zan Stewart, the JJA's 2026 Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism honoree.
Zan Stewart spent thirty-five years covering jazz as a beat reporter writing weekly features, overnight reviews, and club listings through long-term runs at the Los Angeles Times and the Newark Star-Ledger. His liner notes to Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings earned an ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award. He is also a working tenor saxophonist, and the two roles were always intertwined: Stewart came to jazz journalism as an advocate with a reporter's eye and a player's ear. In this conversation, he retraces his path from a hi-fi in Ojai to the clubs of San Francisco, with a lot of music in between.
They cover his early formation in the music (his father was at the Palomar Ballroom in 1935 the night Benny Goodman kicked off the swing era), two decades at the LA Times under Leonard Feather, his move to the Star-Ledger in Newark, his 2014 debut recording The Street Is Making Music, and his current work writing liner notes after a medical battle with oral cancer and osteonecrosis that has sidelined his playing. He also describes the box of cassette tapes in his possession containing unarchived conversations with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, and McCoy Tyner, that he hopes to get out into the world.
(The musical excerpts heard in this episode are "Hampton's Pulpit" from the Hampton Hawes Quartet's 1991 reissue All Night Session and "The Street Is Making Music" from Zan Stewart's 2014 album of the same name.)
Buzzworthy Notes 
Guest & Host
Zan Stewart
Howard Mandel
Discussed
Leonard Feather — jazz critic, Los Angeles Times; mentor to Stewart
Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings — liner notes by Zan Stewart; recipient of the ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award
Hampton Hawes — pianist; subject of Stewart's first published interview
Hear Me Talkin' to Ya — edited by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff (Rinehart, 1955); a formative text for Stewart
Sonny Rollins — official website
Oliver Nelson, Straight Ahead — Prestige, 1961; features Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet
Albert Dailey — pianist; performed with Stewart's early band in Santa Barbara
The 2026 JJA Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism Award
Other nominees: Dan Ouellette, Nate Chinen, and Ben Ratliff
Learn more about JJA Awards
Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org.
This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz. Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. 
For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

Miles Davis would have turned one hundred this year. The centennial has brought the somewhat predictable wave of reissues, retrospectives, and tributes. But which Miles keeps coming back? The suit-and-narrow-lapels Miles of the fifties. Kind of Blue as sonic wallpaper. The Second Great Quintet as the canonical high point.
In this episode, Howard Mandel - JJA president emeritus and author of Miles Ornette Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz - sits down with three guests who've spent serious time inside the music: bassist and author Melvin Gibbs, pianist and scholar Bob Gluck, and journalist Martin Johnson. They push past the myth and talk about what the centennial framing gets right, what it flattens, and why Miles keeps mattering even when the cultural idea of 'cool' has largely moved on without him.
Learn More About: 
Miles Davis 
Howard Mandel
Melvin Gibbs
Bob Gluck
Martin Johnson

Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org.
This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz. Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. 
For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

Jazz criticism has always operated in close quarters: small rooms, tight communities, artists who become sources and sometimes friends. That proximity is part of what makes the writing worth reading. It's also what makes the ethics complicated.
This episode explores that tension. The guests have significant experience between them navigating exactly these questions, and the conversation goes to some candid places, including a few confessions that probably took some time to make.
Featuring:
Rick Mitchell
Hannah Edgar
Paul de Barros
Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org.
This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz. Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. 
For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

JJA Board Member Andrew Gilbert hosts a discussion with Steve Smith (Substack “Night After Night,” former Time Out New York music editor) and Chrys Roney (editor in chief and publisher of Hot House Jazz Magazine) about the past, present, and future of jazz listings. 
Inspired by Gabriel Kahane’s Atlantic essay “A Love Letter to Music Listings,” they recall how outlets like the Village Voice, the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Time Out New York once provided expansive calendars that helped audiences discover scenes, neighborhoods, and emerging artists. They describe the decline of print and mainstream media listings, the labor-intensive nature of curating accurate calendars, and how even insiders still miss shows. 
The conversation contrasts journalistic authority and “crit picks” with transaction-driven event discovery platforms, discusses the need for trusted curators to sift through thousands of gigs, and explores evolving models such as nonprofit-supported listings, presenter-fed CMS tools, Instagram-based calendars, micro-subscriptions, and Hot House’s efforts to preserve its 45-year archive and develop a beta “JazzGPT” product.
Explore:
A Love Letter to Music Listings (paywalled)
Andrew Gilbert
Hot House Jazz
Steve Smith's Night After Night
A special 'thank you' to Terri Hinte for her help in making this episode happen. 
Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org.
This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz. Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. 
For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

Lawrence Peryer, managing editor of The Buzz, hosts a discussion about what it takes to build a sustainable career covering jazz in 2026.
Chicago Tribune critic Hannah Edgar and Earshot Jazz editor Rayna Mathis discuss the realities of working in this field, from the fellowship programs that make full-time journalism possible to the complicated ethics of critiquing people you see at shows three nights a week. They talk about punching up versus supporting vulnerable venues, whether social media is worth the mental health cost, and why a career that keeps you up until 2 AM can still feel like a blessing. 
This is not a straightforward "how-to" episode. The conversation moves beyond career advice into the actual practice and philosophy of making it work.
Learn more about:
Hannah Edgar
Rayna Mathis
Lawrence Peryer
Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org.
This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz. Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. 
For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.