For Gunn-Goodwin, the answer has been to keep that legacy in motion.
Rather than allowing Gordon Goodwin’s extraordinary body of work to become something viewed primarily in retrospect, she has committed herself to expanding its reach — preserving the music, illuminating the stories behind it and continuing the sense of discovery that defined much of Goodwin’s career. That mission now encompasses both Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band and a new project with particularly personal roots: Vangie Gunn-Goodwin’s Big Phat Pod.
The podcast grew from an idea Gordon himself had envisioned before his cancer diagnosis. Today, Gunn-Goodwin is carrying that concept forward, creating a platform that reaches beyond the recordings and performances to explore the creative world surrounding the composer, arranger, bandleader and educator.
For listeners already familiar with Goodwin’s music, the series offers another way into an extensive catalog. For those discovering his work for the first time, it serves as an introduction not only to the compositions themselves but to the musicians, relationships, decisions and experiences that helped shape them.
Goodwin, a four-time Grammy Award winner with 25 Grammy nominations, spent decades building a career distinguished by technical sophistication without sacrificing accessibility. His work moved comfortably across jazz, big-band composition, film scoring and education, while Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band became one of the defining large jazz ensembles of its era.
That ability to communicate music beyond the concert stage was also central to Phat Tracks with Gordon Goodwin, his weekly jazz radio program. The internationally distributed show gave Goodwin an opportunity to share the music that fascinated him while offering listeners insight into his wide-ranging tastes and the ideas behind his own approach to composition and performance.
Big Phat Pod extends that spirit into a new format.
Hosted by Vangie Gunn-Goodwin and musician, producer and arranger Andrew Kesler, the weekly podcast takes listeners behind the music of Goodwin, his film work and the Big Phat Band. Episodes combine conversations with musicians and collaborators, stories surrounding the creative process and closer examinations of arrangements that became part of the band’s identity.
The distinction is important. This is not simply an archival project devoted to looking backward. At its strongest, Big Phat Pod functions as an evolving oral history — one told by people who were inside the rooms, sessions, rehearsals and performances where the music took shape.
Gunn-Goodwin occupies a singular position within that story. Her perspective is both deeply personal and unusually informed: she witnessed Gordon’s creative life at close range while developing her own understanding of the personalities, performances and circumstances surrounding the work. On the podcast, that knowledge gives seemingly familiar pieces new context, revealing details that might otherwise remain outside the public record.
Alongside Kesler and an expanding group of guests, she is building a fuller portrait of Goodwin — not merely as the acclaimed composer and bandleader audiences encountered onstage, but as a collaborator, teacher and relentlessly curious musician whose influence continues through the people who worked alongside him.
That same philosophy is shaping the future of Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band.
The ensemble continues to perform, with concerts designed not to recreate the past but to keep Goodwin’s music active in the present. His presence remains deliberately woven into the production through archival audio and video, including footage of Goodwin performing and leading the band. The result is part concert, part celebration and part continuation of the musical community he spent decades building.
The ensemble draws on a formidable circle of musicians associated with Goodwin and the Big Phat Band, including trombonist Andy Martin, trumpeter Wayne Bergeron, saxophonists Danny Kaneyuki and Brian Scanlon, drummer Ray Brinker, percussionist Joey DeLeon, guitarist Andy Waddell, bass trombonist Craig Gosnell and bassist Kevin Axt, with Gunn-Goodwin contributing vocals.
What binds the project together is not simply nostalgia. It is a shared investment in music that its players believe still has somewhere to go.
That distinction has become central to Gunn-Goodwin’s approach. Preserving Gordon’s legacy, in her view, means more than maintaining an archive or revisiting celebrated recordings. It means continuing the conversation around the music, introducing it to new listeners and allowing the musicians who helped create it to tell the stories that exist between the notes.
With new episodes of Big Phat Pod arriving every Monday across major podcast platforms and YouTube, that conversation now has a regular home. Listeners are also invited to contribute questions, memories and potential topics, giving the project a community dimension that mirrors the collaborative nature of the Big Phat Band itself.
For Gunn-Goodwin, however, the undertaking remains inseparable from something more personal. Behind the podcast, concerts and preservation of Gordon’s work is a promise to make sure the story continues.
“Just you wait — you will see — what Gordon brought to the world is not just a passing memory,” Gunn-Goodwin says. “I was put on this glorious earth to be Gordon’s messenger and to keep his legacy alive. I mean — Big Phat Legacy Alive! This is my life’s purpose.”
It is an emotional declaration, but increasingly, it is also a working philosophy.
Through Big Phat Pod, the continuing life of the Big Phat Band and the musicians carrying Goodwin’s compositions back onto stages, Gunn-Goodwin is transforming remembrance into something active. Gordon Goodwin’s legacy is not being treated as a finished chapter.
It is still being played, discussed, discovered — and carried forward.Stay Connected
Explore more from Big Phat Pod and Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, including new podcast episodes, performances, music and behind-the-scenes updates.Watch and Explore Big Phat Pod Official Websites Instagram @vangiegunn