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.
Posts
