radio three jazz podcasts

Lagging behind as usual, I’ve finally stumbled over ‘Jazz Library,” a luscious series of over 100 podcasts produced by BBC Radio 3, most episodes featuring the output of individual musicians or a specific genre or area of jazz.

Each episode runs for about 30 minutes and the format is a narrative by the modestly-spoken Alyn Shipton interspersed with representative extracts of relevant music usually augmented by recorded interviews with the featured musician or by the sometimes lively comments of well-known jazz commentators (my favourite of whom is a sporadic contributor, Brian Priestly).

Apparently as these are podcasts they’re unable to play full tracks, although I’m not sure whether that’s because of intellectual rights or time restrictions, but that doesn’t matter because bear in mind the object (achieved brilliantly) is to whet the appetite with delicacies – and all vital recording details, including album titles, line-ups and dates, are cited during the podcast, and can also be found on the BBC Jazz’s website, so nobody need complain about not being able to track- down treasured pieces if wanting to hear more.

No infuriating adverts, pop-up or otherwise; no lengthy messages from sponsors – and it’s all free. Just download the BBC Radio iPlayer onto your computer or tablet, search for jazz, scroll down to ‘Jazz Library’ and browse through the listings to select your morsel of choice. Oysters and pearls, spring to mind.