From the Archives: NCRA Award Winning Episode from 2017

This is the Trent Radio program that spawned the Discovering Jazz podcast. In February 2016 my partner and I had recently moved to Peterborough, Ontario and I decided I wanted to do a program on Trent Radio, Call letters CFFF-the community and university radio station. Since they didn’t have a jazz program and I was interested in learning more about jazz I applied to do one. I called it “Discovering Jazz”, as it was (and still is) a discovery process for me.

The following year, on a whim, I entered one of my episodes for the 36th NCRC (National Campus and Community Radio Conference). I didn’t tell anybody I’d entered. And it won the award for best music program in Canada. It came as a shock to those from the station who attended the conference as they went up to accept the trophy.

So I figured that maybe I should make this show into a podcast—and I did.! The first episode was September, 2017. I also made that prize winning episode from October of 2016 into a podcast—and here it is.

Since then I’ve moved to Victoria B.C., and now Edmonton, Alberta (where I was born and raised). And the podcast now emanates from Edmonton, aka “Jazz City”.

In this episode, I play recordings by

-Miles Davis,

-French horn player Mark Taylor,

-Penticton’s Darylectones, t

-the great Gene McDaniels,

-NOJO from Toronto,

-Sarah Vaughan,

Oscar Lopez,

Jane Bunnett (pronounced Bun NET…not BUN net as I say on the podcast)

Sonny Rollins

One correction, though. I refer to Sonny Rollins as the composer of “St. Thomas” melody. In fact, he didn’t compose it, but took it from a traditional melody. And that melody had previously been recorded in a jazz form by pianist Randy Weston under the title of “Fire Down There”.