Two cheers for theJazz, new digital radio station

TheJazz is a new digital radio station launching in the UK on Christmas Day. It claims it will play music from across the jazz spectrum, including bebop, swing, cool jazz, trad, blues, and modern jazz. Artists featured on the station are set to include Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, Charles Mingus, Louis Armstrong, Weather Report, Branford Marsalis, Denys Baptiste, Jamie Cullum, Diana Krall and Madeleine Peyroux.

The new station will be broadcast on DAB digital radio, online at theJazz.com and on Sky and ntl:Telewest. So it’s a global, rather than a national, resource. The station’s PR says it will be engaging existing jazz fans and new listeners by asking the question ‘What is Jazz?’ Listeners will be asked to vote online for their top three jazz tracks – with results broadcast over the Easter weekend, in theJazz 500, a countdown of the UK listeners’ all-time greatest jazz music.

Promising. So why does it raise only two cheers in this parish? Well, because it’s being launched alongside Classic FM. And, fair enough, “Classic FM has taken classical music into the mainstream”, so theJazz might well succeed in its stated aim of “making jazz a part of everyday life in the UK”

The trouble is, I never listen to Classic FM, vastly preferring the original, less popular, classic music station, BBC Radio 3 – my station of choice.

I don’t like Classic FM’s narrower range of music. Or its focus on “soothing”, “beautiful” music. Or its programming of bite-sized chunks of music, the catchy hum-along bits instead of complete works. Or its middlebrow, mainstream tone. Or the relentless adverts (which tell you all you need to know about the audience for any media outlet).

Will I listen to theJazz? I’d like to think so. I’ll certainly give it a fair hearing over Christmas. But if, as feared, it turns out to be a Jamie Cullum/Kenny G jazz-lite station, with token coverage of the serious end of the jazz canon, then I’ll have stopped listening well before the New Year. I might end up applauding it, as I do Classic FM, for taking great music to new listeners, while ignoring it completely for personal listening.



Gerry Smith