Discovering Jazz

Something from the Archives.  One from my favourite series of the past year—The Jazz Solo, Part 3.  I give examples of solos that have been considered by ‘experts’ to be exceptionally amazing.  And one by a great jazz artist that is con

This is Part 4 of my five part series on Time Life’s Giants of Jazz.  Today you’ll hear Teddy Wilson, Earl Hines, Benny Carter, plus six tracks from one set called “The Guitarists”.   The latter includes six of the earliest jazz g

This is a program I put together two years ago…Episode 14—of holiday music.  Mostly Winter holidays: Christmas, Channukah, New Years, Chalica (you probably have no idea what that one is, eh?), one Spring holiday (Ramadan)—and quite a fe

I asked Victoria vocalist and studier of ‘swing’ style jazz, Angela Verbrugge,  to send me names of some great jazz vocalist that would likely be new to me.   She did.   Thank you! This program, as well as last week’s, has me playing mu

Special guest, singer and songwriter Angela Verbrugge, has sent me (upon my request) some recordings from jazz singers I probably never heard of.   These recordings are the subject of this week’s and next week’s podcast. I make it an exchange

Part 3 of Time-Life’s Giant’s of Jazz series, this time featuring Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins, Jelly Roll Morton, Jack Teagarden, Ben Webster, plus Canadian born orchestrator Gil Evans. You’ll also hear Dizzy Gillespie’s first

More from that great Time-Life series, The Giants of Jazz, with such fascinating information about each of the 28 early jazz giants.   This episode features Bix Beiderbecke,  Art Tatum, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, and—surprising

This week I’m catching up on some cd’s that I recently acquired, many of which feature great piano playing.  One of them by Victoria pianist Tom Vickery includes a version of Manha de Carnaval (Black Orpheus), which inspired me to play a few

Time-Life surveyed a number of jazz scholars and as a result put together 28 three-record album sets  dedicated to one jazz ‘giant’.  Each one includes a 30 to 40 something page booklet.  I subscribed to this series and would get one set each

My 3-part series of programs on the jazz solo last year invoked a lot of positive response.   I already re-broadcast the first one on an earlier archives program, and now I’m going to present you with part 2.  This is for those of you who either mi

It seems to be increasingly hard to find good second hand vinyl jazz albums at low prices through thrift stores or used record stores.  But I found some, and I finished listening to them.   I play at least one track from each.   They include albums by Sh

Since we’re in the midst of a federal election here in Canada, I thought I could revisit part 1 of my four-part series from last year on the role of jazz in promoting social and political activism. I address topics of civil rights, diplomacy during

Today I’m playing and talking about some jazz tracks that I recently discovered—some are new recordings, some are older.  And I’m letting them inspire me to create ideas for future podcasts. There appears to be quite the Peterborough-Vi

Here is a rerun of the first of a 3 part series I recorded a few months ago on the jazz solo—trying to explore what makes a great one—-and why people ‘in the know’ consider them great. I also wonder how much of those solos are spo

When you think of jazz the vision is of saxophones, trumpets, crazy drum solos, guitarists moving all over the fretboard, hot piano, funky or walking bass players, etc.  You don’t envision french horns. This episode will change all that! 🙂    Some

According to Wikipedia, Jan Randall, a Canadian composer, pianist, and arranger, has made a career of composing soundtracks for films, theatre, radio, and television.  He combines playing by ear with his formal classical and jazz training.  He is now tea

This week, just a few jazz artists by whose name I put a check mark as I went through Downbeat Magazine’s 2019 Critics Poll. As a followup from last week’s podcast on internationally recognized Canadian jazz musicians, I play a track by Vanco

Every year 150 or so critics rank what they consider to be the top jazz artists in 63 categories, and this is presented in the August issue of Downbeat magazine. Sometimes Canadian jazz musicians are represented.  This year I found 9 who I knew to have C

Here is another favourite episode of mine that I thought would be more popular than it was.  Originally posted last November, this is all about new melodies that were written over chord sequences of another tune, and then became famous. Did you know, for

The Downbeat Jazz Critics poll, published in the magazine’s August issue, summarizes the assessments of some top jazz critics as to the ‘best’ in various categories.  One of those categories is the Jazz Album of the Year. This year&#821

This episode, recorded the Spring of 2018,  features a discussion with Toronto voice coach and singer, Micah Barnes. Micah was a rock and soul singer who made the transition to jazz, and he talks about the differences.  I ask the question “what mak

A very knowledgeable jazz bassist from Peterborough named Craig Paterson sends regular emails of great jazz recordings, and on this program I play a few of them.   It helps me discover new and old music………and I’ll share some of th

Continuing with re-issuing some programs from my archives every 2nd week, here is one on the great Bob Dorough who left us over a year ago. Here is a quote from one of my reviews on the itunes site (Canadian):  “I knew that I’d be hooked when

This is actually Part 3 of a series looking at the cross fertilization of jazz and classical (aka ‘serious’)  music, featuring Al Baggs—a  Peterborough saxophonist and lover of jazz and classical music. This episode explores how each or

Another ‘archive’ program this week; for the summer I’ll have some of the best programs from the past two years of “Discovering Jazz” every 2nd week. This week is one of the two episodes of Beatles music transformed into jaz