Being Guided By The Light is the fifth album by pianist/ composer Mamiko Watanabe, featuring heralded bassist Santi Debriano and legendary drummer Billy Hart.

Born in Fukuoka, Japan, Watanabe began playing the piano at the age of four under instruction at the Yamaha School of Music. Her inspiration was Tashiko Akiyoshi, the boundary-smashing Japanese-American pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader noted for wide-ranging powerful, complex compositions.

Mamiko received a scholarship to attend the Berklee College of Music where she received several awards for Jazz piano and Composition. She was also a semi-finalist at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival Solo Piano Competition both in 2002 and 2003. She has toured Germany, Italy and Japan and has performed with jazz greats such as Joe Lovano, Kevin Mahogany and Bobby McFerrin while in college. After moving to New York, Mamiko performed at notable venues including Blue Note, Dizzy's Club at the Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Jazz at the Kitano and more.

The story of Mamiko unfolds in this episode as we discuss and sample music from her latest release. This album is her premiere with JoJo Records - created by jazz musician Simon Belelty - with an emphasis on high quality audio and vinyl.

Chris DiGirolamo could be called “The Accidental Publicist.”

A lifelong drummer from age 5, Chris was hooked. His mother took him to Jazz from a young age, but he truly fell in love with the genre at 14, when a friend’s uncle introduced him to Jean Luc Ponty’s “Rhythms of Hope.”

Chris attended Berklee College of Music and New York Institute of Technology. From there, he went on to work as assistant engineer at the legendary Systems Two Recording Studio, followed by a turn in Sausalito, California at Record Plant Studios (“The Plant”).

Moving back to the East Coast and looking for something new, Chris became a freelance writer for several small music publications. But post 9/11, work in that field was nearly nonexistent. However, one unexpected phone call from a guy who said “Are you Chris? You were recommended to me as a publicist,” changed his life. And that’s where the story of Two For The Show Media begins.

For their seventh outing together as a close-knit, collaborative rhythm tandem, bassist Leon Lee Dorsey and drummer Mike Clark tapped pianist Michael Wolff as third man in their ongoing trio adventures. Wolff, who had previously appeared with Dorsey and Clark on 2020’s Play Sgt. Pepper, completes the triumvirate on this heartfelt tribute to the late, great pianist-composer in the new album titled “A Letter to Bill Evans.”

These renderings of Bill Evans classics contain the kind of sparkling energy and improvisational freshness that always animates these trio sessions between Dorsey, Clark and their third partner. And this time around they hit on the perfect choice with pianist Michael Wolff, who first heard Evans live at Davies Hall in San Francisco when he was 18, and got the only available tickets which were actually on the stage, where he got to experience the concert close up.

“A few years later, when I was 20,” Wolff explained, “I went on the road with Cal Tjader . I ran into Bill Evans a lot in various cities where we all were playing; I befriended him and, of course, hounded him for information about his music. He was very open and understanding with me. And whenever he was performing in the Bay Area, I would go hear him every night.”

Wolff’s connection with Mike Clark, who is celebrating his 50th anniversary as a member of The Headhunters, goes back to the late ‘60s on the Bay Area jazz scene when Wolff was house pianist with Bishop Norman Williams’ Sunday afternoon jam at a great SF club called the Both/And. “I was 17 years old and still in high school, I wasn’t old enough to get into most clubs then. But I had this gig and Mike came by one Sunday to sit in. And that was the beginning of a long working relationship.”

While the music of “A Letter to Bill Evans” captures the spirit of the great pianist, Wolff/Clark/Dorsey take some liberties with this classic Evans material, interpreting it through their collective musical lens. In my conversation with all three musicians, we talk about how the album came together, their concept for each track, and how it’s truly their “love letter” to the music and the man who is one of the giants of jazz.