The music, the people playing it, and the audience are all in a state of total oneness. It's a spontaneous improvisation as delicate as an eggshell. You're almost afraid to breathe lest this moment dissolve, and we are all dropped back to the cold earth. Then you open your eyes to see that the bassist is Charlie Haden, and you know that this moment will not end until its time has come, because Charlie Haden practically discovered this sense of the sublime in music for us. He seems to create it at will. Steve Slagle knows this experience well. He played in Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra. Steve searches the WKCR archives for live, unreleased recordings of Charlie Haden with host Mitch Goldman, this Monday (2/2) on Deep Focus. Tune in Monday (Feb 2) from 6p to 9p NYC time on WKCR 89.9FM, WKCR-HD, or wkcr.org.
Or join us when it goes up on the Deep Focus podcast on your favorite podcasting app or at https://mitchgoldman.podbean.com/. Subscribe right now to get notifications when new episodes are posted. You can also uncover over 400 episodes of Deep Focus. Just like WKCR, it's ad-free, sponsor-free, all free, totally non-commercial. We won't even ask for your contact info.

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Photo credit: Charlie Haden 1981 by Brianmcmillen CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org-licenses-by-sa-0-3.0. #WKCR #DeepFocus #CharlieHaden #SteveSlagle #JazzRadio #JazzPodcast #JazzInterview #MitchGoldman Deep Focus is a production of Small Media Large.

2026.02.16 Steve Slagle on Charlie Haden - 1 of 3