theJazz Blog

April 2

It's all hands to the deck here at theJazz HQ, as the clock ticks ever closer to the second phase of our launch at 9am this Friday morning.

We've now counted up all of the votes in theJazz 500, but the number one will remain a secret until just before 9pm on Bank Holiday Monday.

Don't forget to make a date with Helen Mayhew on Friday morning. Along with David Jensen and Margherita Taylor, Helen will be steering you through the chart.

The response has been so good that we have decided to make this an annual event every Easter weekend. That means that theJazz 500 will become a living, breathing annual snapshot of the UK's jazz music tastes. It will be fascinating to see how it develops over the years.

By the way, a group of us from theJazz caught Courtney Pine's fantastic set at Pizza Express in London's Soho last week. He was utterly awesome - the consumate performer and an absolutely astoundingly talented musician. If you ever get the chance to hear him play live, make sure that you seize it with both hands. We're really proud that Courtney is going to be one of our presenters on theJazz, playing his own personal choice of music every Sunday evening at 9pm.

We were at Pizza Express to help celebrate Jazzwise Magazine's tenth birthday. Everyone at Jazzwise - and especially the publisher and editor Jon Newey - has been very supportive of us over the past few months, as we've been gearing up for the launch of theJazz. It's a great magazine and if you haven't seen it, you should try to pick up a copy of the bumper tenth birthday edition. All of us at theJazz would like to wish Jon and everyone at Jazzwise a very happy 10th birthday!

back to blog entries