theJazz Blog

We may only be half a year into theJazz’s life but the station has just won its first major award. We were delighted to become the first ever recipient of the Chairman’s Award at the Arqivas, the biggest annual event for the commercial radio world. The great and the good of UK radio were at the event in London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel to hear RadioCentre chairman Paul Brown call theJazz the industry’s “single most impressive development in the past 12 months”.

He said: “A stroke of Commercial Radio genius and lateral-thinking allowed a new digital station to be born on Christmas Day at the time when literally thousands of listeners were unwrapping and setting up their new DAB digital radio presents. I was amongst the station’s first listeners. It was fabulous: a non-stop, terrific variety of music not previously available on any other broadcast radio service. Now, it has a line up of excellent presenters doing for Jazz music what its sister station Classic FM has done for classical music.

” As well as our successes on air, I also wanted to let you know that theJazz is continuing to expand its activities. Firstly, I wanted to tell you about a live show, Ronnie Scott’s In The Park, which we are presenting at Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire at the end of July to round off the series of Woburn Live concerts. The show is rather a momentous occasion and marks the first time that Ronnie Scott’s Big Band has emerged blinking en masse from the dark of their Soho base and taken their show on the road. Among the acts performing at the event – which will feature a mix of jazz and swing classics from the repertoire of Count Basie and Duke Ellington – are our own presenter Jacqui Dankworth, Marti Pellow, Curtis Stigers and Peter Grant, together with Victoria Hart, the former waitress who landed a record deal after performing at a party in Cannes in May. Tickets can be obtained form www.woburnlive.com.

We have also released our second CD in the space of a month, The Very Best Of Latin Jazz. Together with its predecessor Come Into The Cool, both albums are selling remarkably well. And in association with retailer HMV we have launched a new jazz chart which can be seen here.

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