Indie musician Aidan Hawken just played the first show for his new solo album Pillows and Records. Rather than do a straight rock show, he had original string charts written for an accompanying string trio and hired the best in the business to sit in and play with him. A daring experiment indeed.

Irvin Mayfield is one of the most talented jazz trumpet players livingin America today. When I went down to New Orleans this past spring to interview people about the slow recovery process following Hurricane Katrina, I spoke with Irvin about his own losses and how he’s recovering.

My mini-doc, India: A Pound of Flesh, won the IF Stone award for International Investigative Reporting at UC Berkeley. The piece was also just picked up by the PBS show FRONTLINE/World as part of their Rough Cut series.

Watch this mini-doc about the plight of Sonoma County Apple Farmers. The piece was selected for air by KRCB, a PBS station in Northern California, where it will screen between longer segments this summer and fall.

Check out this pod about the Ski Jump that Icer Air built in the middle of San Francisco. That’s right, a Ski Jump in Pacific Heights. The world’s top skiers and snowboarders gathered to test their skill and compete for top honors in this unusual competition.

I was invited to attend the Sundance Independent Producer’s Conference in 2005 with a work in progress version of my documentary about the Church of Craft.