The Podcast
Music Life and Times, an ongoing discussion between Kevin Bales and Mike Shaw, argues that becoming an accomplished musician takes three commitments: discipline, self-acceptance or self-confidence, and cooperation. They are also the life lessons that music teaches those who would learn to play. Our podcast seeks to prove the premise through revelations about musicians past and present, and from the experiences of the podcasters, an internationally acclaimed jazz pianist at the peak of his career and a singer-pianist who has performed in clubs and concert halls across the U.S. for six decades.
Podcast Biographies
Kevin Bales
By some measures, Kevin Bales at 17 was a latecomer to jazz. But if late to the party, he could commit to what would be his life’s work with a reasonable degree of expectation. He was already an accomplished pianist, invited at age 16 by Conductor Robert Shaw to audition for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
In 1994, less than a decade into jazz, Kevin won the American Pianist Association’s Jazz Piano Competition. In addition to the important jazz venues in the South, he has performed in some of the most acclaimed clubs and festivals in America and around the world: the JVC Jazz Festival in New York, The Bakery in Los Angeles, The Kennedy Center and Lincoln Center jazz series, the Toronto and Edinburgh jazz festivals, and the Moscow Center for the Performing Arts. His discography is impressive, and he has recorded and toured with a number of monumental artists: Wynton Marsalis, Louie Bellson, Eddie Daniels, James Moody, Ben Tucker, Ira Sullivan, Sam Rivers, and Nat Adderley.
Kevin is also a highly respected teacher of jazz. While still a senior at North Florida, he was drafted into a full teaching load, and continued to be an integral part of the school’s jazz program for upwards of a decade. Today, Kevin manages his own schedule of jazz students as well as the improvisation and small group programs at Atlanta’s Georgia State University.
Mike Shaw
Mike Shaw is the author of the novel The Musician. He has followed a dual career path, as writer and musician. As a musician, he has been performing as a singer-pianist for more than five decades in nightclubs and on concert stages, as a solo artist, in small combos, for several years heading up a seven-piece New Orleans-based jazz funk band, and currently with other Atlanta-based jazz musicians as The Mike Shaw Trio. As a writer, he counts more than 15,000 published articles, from investigative pieces adapted for 60 Minutes and ABC 20/20 features, to ghostwritten articles, white papers, and documentaries for corporate clients. Mike’s novel, The Musician, was published in June 2021 by Atlanta-based Blue Room Books. Almost simultaneously, Understanding Economic Equilibrium, which he co-authored with Federal Reserve Chief Economist Dr. Thomas Cunningham, was released by New York-based Business Expert Press.