Stephen Braude with Yamara Band
In this exclusive interview, we explore Big Dipper, the remarkable musical legacy of Stephen Braude, and how Yamara Band brought his visionary compositions to life through passion, collaboration, and dedication.
1. Big Dipper represents the culmination of a remarkable musical journey involving Stephen Braude, Yamara Band, and several collaborators across different countries. Looking back at the project’s beginnings, how did this creative partnership develop, and what made Stephen’s compositions so special to everyone involved?
This partnership developed from a longtime friendship between Stephen and Buba, their similarities, and their deep passion for music.
Stephen played piano all his life, beginning at the age of two, and developed a love for jazz and composing very early on. He also traveled throughout his life and made friends around the world. When I came into his life from Yugoslavia, so did my friends. One of my closest friends, Buba Stojanovic, from Belgrade, Serbia, became his best friend. Buba was a psychologist, but he also devoted his life to music, composing and playing guitar. They were remarkably similar in spirit: creative, joyful, curious, and always eager to explore new ideas. They loved discussing music and science.
When Buba retired in 2020, he started arranging and producing Steve’s music. It was a wonderful collaboration and friendship among the three of us, even though Buba lived in Belgrade. When Buba unexpectedly passed away in 2024, his best friend, Misko Jovanovic, also from Belgrade, Serbia, continued collaborating with Steve on his compositions. Misko had been a composer and guitarist since his youth, and he brought his own musical sensibility to the project, giving Stephen’s compositions a new dimension while honoring their original spirit.
When Stephen unexpectedly passed away in January 2026, they had completed 19 compositions altogether. I was always involved, helping especially with Misko, since he does not speak English. Interestingly, Stephen and Buba had met in person many times in Belgrade, but Stephen never met Misko or spoke with him. Their communication was entirely written.
So, I would say that the story of Big Dipper began with friendship, a shared love of music, and a remarkable connection among three creative minds. We were all very attached to Steve’s compositions, especially Big Dipper. That piece was very dear to all of us, and I would say it laid the foundation for everything that followed. What made this collaboration so special was their love of and dedication to music, sounds, and melodies, as well as their willingness to let each other contribute their own personalities and artistic voices.
Stephen Braude’s sheet music and piano performances, rooted in jazz, were transformed first by Buba’s arrangements and his love of J. S. Bach’s harmonies and ambient music, and then by Misko’s rock influences. It was a 40-year journey of changes and transformations. Finally, David Rodriguez joined the project. He not only mixed and produced the music but also transformed it further, paying special attention to instrumentation and sound.
As a result of these changes, the music moves freely among contemporary jazz, fusion, tango, electronic sounds, cinematic textures, and more experimental passages. Yet despite this diversity, the compositions retain a distinctive identity. There is always something deeper beneath the surface: a sense of exploration, emotion, and unexpected discovery.
2. Stephen Braude was not only a gifted pianist and composer but also a respected philosopher whose intellectual curiosity extended into many different fields. How do you feel his philosophical background, personality, and unconventional way of thinking influenced the musical ideas and emotional character of Big Dipper?
I think Stephen’s music reflected the way he lived his life: with an endlessly curious mind, a vivid imagination, and a deep fascination with the world and the universe around him.
Stephen was a philosopher by profession and an award-winning 3D photographer, but he was also a free spirit who never accepted conventional boundaries without questioning them. He loved exploring unusual ideas, making unexpected connections, and looking at familiar things from a completely different perspective. I believe this way of thinking found a natural expression in his compositions.
Big Dipper reflects that creative freedom. The compositions on the album do not follow predictable paths. They move through different moods, rhythms, and soundscapes, sometimes surprising us and sometimes creating moments of great intimacy and beauty. There is an adventurous quality to the music, but also a sense of mystery.
Steve also had a playful side, a wonderful sense of humor, and a deep appreciation for the unexpected. At the same time, he was fascinated by the bigger questions of existence and the complexity of human experience. I hear both sides of him in this music: the joy of experimentation and the desire to explore something deeper.
In that sense, Big Dipper is a very personal expression of who Stephen was. It carries his imagination, his individuality, and his courage to follow his own path and experience music as a journey. Although he is no longer here to continue that journey himself, his music allows us, if we listen, to experience his imaginative world and make our own discoveries within it.
3. Following the passing of both Stephen and arranger Ljubomir “Buba” Stojanović, completing the album became an especially meaningful responsibility. What were the greatest emotional and creative challenges of finishing their work, and how did you ensure that their original artistic vision remained at the heart of the record?
The greatest challenge was understanding that we were no longer simply finishing an album. We were entrusted with completing something that Stephen, Buba, and Miško had invested years of creativity and musical imagination into. Following the passing of Stephen and Buba, that responsibility took on an entirely different emotional dimension.
Gina brought me into the project to produce the album, complete what had been accomplished to that point, and bring it to a level where it could be released commercially. She gave me complete creative freedom, a “dream” but yet highly responsible. What I discovered was an extraordinary collection of music, but one that would require a tremendous amount of technical reconstruction, creative decision-making, and new production work.
Our first challenge was simply recovering the music. Buba’s computer had been sitting untouched for more than a year. Exporting the original sessions proved enormously difficult. Software had become outdated, certain programs were no longer functioning as expected, and many files needed to be located and reconnected. What initially appeared to be a straightforward transfer of recordings became an exercise in musical archaeology.
Because I hadn’t been involved in the original recording process and was unfamiliar with much of the music, I had to essentially rediscover it. I spent countless hours listening to old temporary mixes, comparing different versions, identifying missing parts, and trying to understand the musical intentions behind decisions made years earlier. Sometimes those early mixes were our only clues to what an arrangement was supposed to sound like.
Miško was absolutely essential throughout this process. He had worked alongside Buba on many of the arrangements and had also collaborated independently with Stephen on others. Buba had contributed to six of the ten compositions, while Miško’s creative involvement extended across the project. Following Buba’s passing, Miško continued developing and completing the arrangements, working closely with his son, Mića, who handled programming and software.
That continuity was invaluable. Miško wasn’t someone coming in to reinterpret another arranger’s work. He had been part of the musical conversation from nearly the beginning. He understood Stephen’s compositions, Buba’s approach, and the creative thinking that had shaped the material.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect was knowing where the line existed between completing someone’s artistic vision and unintentionally changing it. Every creative decision carried an additional responsibility. We wanted to elevate the music without losing the personalities that made it special.
Throughout the process, I kept returning to one fundamental question: Would Stephen and Buba be happy with the result? I believe they would.
One of the most meaningful outcomes of the project was the relationship that developed between Miško and me. We came from different musical backgrounds and brought different creative instincts to the table. But through countless discussions, revisions, and musical decisions, I believe we developed a profound mutual respect for each other’s musicality.
By the time we finished, we had established a creative trust that went well beyond this particular album. I’m genuinely excited about what we might accomplish together on subsequent projects.
What began as a technically complicated and emotionally difficult undertaking ultimately became something much more meaningful. With Gina’s determination to see Stephen’s music realized, Miško and Mića’s continued creative work, and the contributions of everyone involved, we were able to bring years of recordings, ideas, and unfinished material together into a unified artistic statement.
For me, Big Dipper is much more than an album completed after the loss of two extraordinary artists. It’s the preservation of a musical conversation that began years ago, one that we were privileged to carry forward, and one that continues to inspire new musical possibilities.
4. The album moves between jazz, tango, electronic textures, cinematic arrangements, and more experimental territory. Tracks such as “Average Maniac in Las Vegas,” “Creepy Crawlers – Slithering Serenade,” and “The Somber Robes of Evening” reveal very different musical personalities. How did you approach maintaining a cohesive identity while preserving the individuality of each composition?
One of the things that fascinated me most about Stephen’s music was that it refused to be confined to a single genre. His compositions could move from jazz to tango, from something almost cinematic to something wonderfully unpredictable and experimental. And yet, beneath all those different musical personalities, there was a very recognizable creative intelligence at work.
I came to realize that the diversity wasn’t something we needed to correct. It was something we needed to celebrate.
As a producer, there’s sometimes a temptation to make every track on an album conform to a particular sound or formula. But I felt that doing so with Big Dipper would have taken away much of what made Stephen’s music so compelling. The compositions have their own personalities, and I wanted each one to retain its individuality.
Consider the contrast between “Average Maniac in Las Vegas,” “Creepy Crawlers – Slithering Serenade,” and “The Somber Robes of Evening.” Even their titles suggest very different emotional worlds. I didn’t want to force those compositions into the same musical space. Each needed its own sense of dynamics, atmosphere, and dramatic development. For me, cohesion didn’t mean making everything sound alike. It meant establishing a consistent level of musical and sonic quality, a shared sense of space, and a natural relationship between the instruments, regardless of where the compositions took us stylistically.
A large part of that came down to perspective. I wanted Stephen’s piano to remain a central musical voice, while allowing the arrangements to expand or contract around it. Some passages demanded intimacy and restraint; others called for greater energy, density, or a more expansive presentation. The production had to be flexible enough to accommodate both without losing its overall identity.
The arrangements themselves were also an important unifying element. Buba and Miško brought a musical sophistication that connected these very different compositions. Their understanding of harmony, rhythm, and orchestration provided a sense of continuity even when the music ventured into unexpected territory.
From a mixing standpoint, I approached the album as a complete listening experience rather than ten unrelated pieces. Tonal balance, dynamics, depth, and the relationship between instruments all helped create a consistent sonic foundation. But I was careful not to impose identical treatments on every track. Sometimes cohesion comes from knowing when to let a track sound completely different. Track selection and track order were very carefully constructed to make a complete listening experience, thus the bookended idea of Big Dipper and Big Dipper – Tango Noir.
I think that’s ultimately what makes Big Dipper such an interesting album. It doesn’t ask the listener to stay in one musical world. It invites them to travel through several, each with its own character, while remaining connected to the imagination of the same composer.
I wasn’t trying to make ten different compositions sound the same. I was trying to make ten different musical personalities feel as though they belonged to the same extraordinary mind.
5. The production brings together Stephen’s original piano performances, Yamara Band’s arrangements, live musicians, and immersive Dolby Atmos mixing. What were the most important artistic decisions behind this production approach, and how did the contributions of the additional musicians transform the original recordings?
My primary goal was to create an album that sounded as though all these extraordinary musicians had come together in one place, at one time, with a shared musical vision. In reality, we were working with performances recorded years apart, under different circumstances, using different technologies. The challenge was to make those differences disappear while preserving the personality and spontaneity of the original recordings.
One of the most important artistic decisions was to preserve Stephen’s piano performances as authentic expressions of his own musical imagination. We deliberately avoided introducing new piano improvisations because that would have meant attempting to imagine what Stephen might have played. His improvisational language was uniquely his own, and I felt strongly that we should never manufacture that voice in his absence. We could develop the arrangements around him, but Stephen’s musical identity had to remain untouched.
Another significant decision was replacing some of the virtual instruments with live musicians. The original arrangements were wonderfully sophisticated, but I felt that certain passages could benefit from the organic interaction, subtle imperfections, and emotional expression that live performers bring to the music. I wanted the album to feel less like a collection of programmed elements and more like a living, breathing ensemble.
That process was far more involved than simply recording new parts and dropping them into the sessions. For example, I might commission a drummer to create new programmed performances, then compare those parts against the original programming. Sometimes the original contained the stronger musical idea, while the new performance offered better energy or a more convincing feel. I would select elements from both, reconstruct them within yet another drum instrument or programming environment, and carefully shape the result until it sounded like one cohesive performance.
The same philosophy applied to the live recordings. Not every session immediately delivered what we were looking for. Sometimes a performance was technically excellent but didn’t quite capture the character of the arrangement. We would revisit those parts, occasionally recording them more than once, until the performance felt completely natural within the composition.
Miško played an important role in that creative development. Beyond his original work with Stephen and Buba, I frequently encouraged him to explore additional guitar parts, harmonic textures, and musical ideas that could further develop the arrangements. His contributions helped connect the original recordings with the newer performances, bringing additional depth and musical continuity to the album.
What made the additional musicians so valuable wasn’t simply that they replaced electronic sounds with acoustic ones. They introduced another level of expression and human interaction. A live musician interprets a phrase, responds to the emotional direction of the music, and brings subtle variations that can transform how an entire arrangement feels. Those contributions gave the recordings greater warmth, movement, and an ensemble character while remaining faithful to the original compositions. Thank you Sarah Thiele, Charles McNeal, Ramiro Nasello, Andrew Joslyn, Derek Jone, and Jeremy Lewicki for their musical contributions.
Then came the challenge of mixing everything into a unified sonic world. Every recording had its own sonic fingerprint, its own sense of space, dynamics, and tonal character. My responsibility was to bring all those elements together so the listener would never hear the seams between the original performances and the new material.
Dolby Atmos offered a particularly exciting creative opportunity. Rather than simply spreading instruments around a room, I wanted to use the immersive environment to reveal the intricacy of the arrangements and create a more intimate connection between the listener and the musicians. Atmos allowed the instruments to breathe, creating space for the interplay between Stephen’s piano, Miško’s guitar, the rhythm section, and the many other musical voices. But I was careful never to let the technology become the story. There were no gimmick moves made, just allowing elements to live in their own space, and reverbs to give depth. The immersive presentation had to feel organic and musical, not like an audio demonstration. The same philosophy guided the stereo mix: clarity, emotional impact, and a sense of musicians performing together.
Ultimately, the additional musicians didn’t change the identity of Big Dipper. They helped us realize its full potential. My responsibility as producer was to bring together the original vision, the new performances, and the available technology in a way that made the music feel complete, cohesive, and above all, alive.
6. With Big Dipper now submitted for Grammy consideration, Stephen’s music has an opportunity to reach audiences who may be discovering his work for the first time. Beyond any potential recognition, what do you hope listeners will take away from this album, and what does its release mean for preserving Stephen Braude’s musical legacy?
Of course, above all, I hope people will enjoy Stephen’s music and remember it.
After losing Stephen, and before him my friend Buba, I felt that the most precious thing I could preserve from them was their music. It was something they both loved deeply and devoted so much of their lives to. Through their music, a part of them can continue to live. It was a lifelong passion they shared, and for me it remains a living connection to both of them.
Music was closest to Stephen’s heart, yet somehow he never made a real effort to bring his compositions to the public. I always felt they were beautiful and deserved to be heard. After his passing, I wanted to do what I could to make that happen. Completing Big Dipper became my way of honoring his talent, his imagination, and his lifelong devotion to music. I wanted this beautiful part of him to be heard.
I am deeply grateful that this album has the opportunity to reach a wider audience and even receive Grammy consideration. For me, Big Dipper is not just an album; it is a way to remember Steve and keep his legacy alive.
If Stephen’s compositions continue to touch people and bring them joy, then I will feel that I have accomplished what I set out to do: to give his music the life and audience it always deserved.
Gina Ruk | Psychologis