Phil Schaap

This was 2001, 2002 at Juilliard, which was a great experience.

I got to study with Wycliffe Gordon and took wonderful composition classes with David Berger and, history classes with Phil Schaap and Lauren Schoenberg, like all these incredible guys and gals.

Many of my colleagues I play with today are, you know, former students from those schools, both of those schools.

But Juilliard was great because it opened a lot of doors.

Uh, but even on those, he wasn't credited, and the only way that we found out it was Coltrane is that Big Nick Nicholas A tenor saxophonist from about the same era said, "You know what? I used to play with Billy Valentine, and Coltrane did too.

In fact, I'm sure he made a recording session with him." So that got Phil Schaap going.

Phil is a jazz historian who's on the radio in the New York area.

Mm-hmm.

It was like, I didn't really, you know, I remember the big tall tales, but yeah, you're right.

So what happened in the 70s was Columbia University had a radio station, WBGO, and I think it's still on the air, but they had a student there named Phil Schaap, and his parents were big jazz fans.

And so when he got a slot or he, whatever, he decided he was going to play big band jazz, all the legends.

And then he sought out to meet them because they were still alive, you know, that's the young and, or Warren and his brother and dad and, you know, all of them.

Well, and Charlie Parker's discography.

I spent years listening to WKCR and Phil Schaap doing Bird Flight every morning.

Yeah, yeah.

Those songs are imprinted in the head.

But now when you put on vinyl, the crackle, the hum, it feels different compared to all this hyper- Synthetic dimension.

Yeah, the sort of analog resonates differently amongst all this zero and one stuff.

I'm so happy I have all those analog tapes I made of Phil Schaap in that morning show.

I have dozens and dozens of those tapes.