Jeff Litman, Living Days in session today

As we get ready to move to a weekly schedule this spring, we’ve begun realizing our dream of bringing in more of the best new and noteworthy acts from our local scene and around the country.

Today’s sessions, which will air at a later date to be announced, spotlight two very different artists.

New York-based singer/songwriter Jeff Litman has taken a long, learned route back to the basics. Born in Minneapolis, he was a serious guitarist and pianist by age 10. His tendency to musical immersion led him to Indiana University’s renowned jazz program, from which he graduated in 2002. There, coursework and his own curiosity steered him to classical giants from Bach to Schoenberg, along with contemporary composers such as Elliot Carter and Pierre Boulez. He became a classical guitarist.

In 2004, he began study at the Manhattan School of Music and graduated two years later with a master’s in classical guitar performance. By the time he entered doctoral study at the City University of New York in 2007, Litman was well on his way to a life in classical music. But the sounds and loves of his youth proved too seductive and, after a bit of musical soul searching, he remembered why he took up guitar in the first place.

Litman dropped out of graduate school and began feverishly writing and recording songs for his debut album, both at his home studio in New York and with producer/engineer Andy Thompson in Minneapolis. The result is Postscript, a sophisticated collection of indie-pop gems that vividly document the aftermath of a failed relationship. While Litman played most of the instruments on the album, he is joined by some talented friends — including singer Kelly Jones, trumpeter Diego Merino, flutist Meghan Miller, and cellist Emily Dufour— who help bring thefullness of his arrangements to life.

We know next to nothing about our second guest today, NYC-based neo-New Wave band Living Days, beyond the fact that singer Stephonik Youth is reputed to be among the most exciting performers around these days — and the band’s music is great! We’ll leave to host Jack Rabid to glean some precious nuggets of information about the mysterious Living Days in the course of his interview.