The Hot Box

Some jazz journalists have been using phrases like “the end of an era” since the death of Wayne Shorter and Ahmad Jamal. In this Hot Box we pay tribute to a few of the jazz greats who have left us in recent years…….or stopped performing.

As the title suggests, this is a new record for the hot box. Five fantastic tracks, one hour show! Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) kicking things off with 13 minutes of magic.

We made it! 100 episodes of The Hot Box. Thank you to all our listeners and subscribers for sticking with me. In this episode we feature two tracks from our good friend Linley Hamilton, with Gerry Buckley starting us off. The new Hot Box website is now online, http://www.hotboxjazz.com

This episode brings us one away from 100 epsiodes of The Hox Box. Included this week are some new releases and two tracks from the Canadian jazz pianist Oscar Peterson.

New Stuff! Its Donald’s first show on JazzÉIRE!. This show features all new releases for this Hot Box www.jazzeireradio.com

After the great reaction to Hot Box 96, we decided to do a second edition devoted to the fantastic 42 volume series of solo piano recitals known as the Maybeck Series. Recorded over 6 years from 1990 to 1996, the concerts took place in the wood lined hall designed by the now iconic architect Bernard Maybeck, with just 50 seats in the audience and a perfectly tuned Yamaha grand piano. Long unavaila...

The 96th edition of The Hot Box! This an all-piano affair that marks the re-release (on Spotify) of all 42 albums recorded in the 90’s, of the solo piano recitals branded as The Maybeck Recitals. Recorded by the independent Concord Jazz label, they present a who’s who of jazz pianists of the last decade of the last century. The real biggies aren’t there - the Herbie Hancocks, the Oscar Petersons -...

The Hot Box 95: What’s in it? Some great new music that’s what. Two from America, one from Belgium, and two from Ireland. The album Tim Fitzgerald’s Full House was awarded to Daniel Cervigni who emailed Donald@jazzireland.ie, and now you can contact Donald to “win” the copy of Chick Corea’s Acoustic Band double album “Live”, which marks the second anniversary of Chick’s death.

The Box goes abroad this time, heading south east to Italy, where some exceptional and distinctive jazz can be found. In this edition we highlight the marked attention to lyricism which informs so much Italian jazz, as though perhaps the traditions of Italy’s great classical tradition and opera lie beneath much of the contemporary jazz scene. We start however at the inception of jazz in Italy, ban...

Why do some bands choose brand names rather than the name of their leader? A very brief investigation in the Hot Box #093.

The 92nd Hot Box is hot with guitars all the way. And there’s a reason. The new album from Chicago-based guitarist Tim Fitzgerald. Better still, you could become the lucky owner of a copy. An album that has been Album of the Month in Downbeat with a four and a half star review! So check in to the Box and see how you could get lucky!

The 91st Hot Box takes a look at Christmas (already!)A selection of jazz from all eras that celebrates or satirises Christmas from the personal collection of Donald Helme.

A cornucopia of delights from new recordings makes up the 66-odd minutes of this edition, starting out with a track from one of the new jazz superstars.

Tracks this time are exclusively (well almost) from brand shiny new albums. The exception sadly is another of those remembrance pieces, this time for the singer Tina May who died earlier this year.

In the 87th Hot Box we scratched the surface of the hot topic of females in jazz, and now we to try to go a little deeper, so the 88th picks out some more women whose contribution to jazz has been stellar. And then we take a listen to an extract from the famous Piano Jazz series presented by Marian McPartland, in the studio with her friend, the legendary Mary Lou Williams.We’re still only scratch...

The Hot Box 87 - in which we celebrate some of the best female jazz artists past and presentScratching the surface in just an hour, we can listen to a few of the female jazz musicians that have been prominent, but in such a talented minority, for the 100 or so years of jazz music.

A plethora of all-new material this time around in The Hot Box 086 including a great set from John Donegan’s Irish Sextet and the long awaited blues bonanza on Nigel Mooney’s Mooney’s Blues.

And the Hot Box gets to number 85!This time, a few samples from the Jazz Times’s Top 10 albums of the 1980s, together with a review of the new Palmetto release by baritone and clarinet star Brian Landrus. And the third and final track, never before heard, of the Louis Stewart/Honor Heffernan acoustic session.

This edition is full to bursting with new material, and includes another track - never before heard -from Honor Heffernan and Louis Stewart, as well two new ECM releases and pieces from the first volume of the all-guitar tribute to Pat Martino on the High Note label.

The Hot Box 83 “The Nostalgia Show” all started with a listener request to look at some of the music that ignited a whole new era for jazz audiences, the last of the 50s and the full post-bop era.

In this episode of The Hot Box there is an hour-plus of new recordings from at home and abroad, celebrating the return to both collective recording and live performance.

This episode of the Hot Box sets the scene for Jazz Legends – Charles Mingus 100th and Miles Davis Kind of Blue.  21st April – National Concert Hall – Dublin (https://publish.blubrry.com/s-505872/episode/new/jazz-events/concert/4351-jazz-legends-charles-mingus-100th-and-miles-davis-kind-of-blue.html)22nd April – Cork Opera House – Cork City (https://publish.blubrry.com/s-505872/episode/new/jazz-ev...

A complete departure for our 80th birthday, with wall-to-wall vocal groups, stimulated by a positive reaction to the all-vocal content of the 77th Hot Box. So, for the first time, we have an hour of the best harmony vocalising in jazz, from the streets of New Orleans to Carnegie Hall.

Once again, the central preoccupation is the amazing roster of guitar players, this time those filed under the letter H. And under that heading the music world was blessed for many years with the presence of Jim Hall. So there’s some great straight ahead jazz from him, and some less straight ahead from Joel Harrison and Charlie Hunter.

Listen back to the live broadcast of The Hot Box on Jazz Radio Ireland for New Year’s Eve 2021. This is a 2-hour special edition of The Hot Box presented by Donald Helme.