Change is in the air at BBC Radio 3 in terms of jazz programming on a Monday night.
Soon the new presenter for the late evening show, replacing Jez Nelson who has fronted the long running Jazz on 3 for many years and continues to do so for a little while yet, will be announced by the new production company who are taking the show over from Nelson’s company Somethin’ Else. All we know for now, although the announcement is expected fairly soon, is that the presenter will be a well known musician.
Wouldn’t it be a positive move if the new presenter was Soweto Kinch, above centre, the multi-award winning alto saxophonist and rapper from Birmingham?
As well as proving himself a hugely able broadcaster in recent years on radio and even just as recently as this past week on TV, such an appointment would also be positive because it would surely draw in younger audiences, the “Robert Glasper generation” who identify with both jazz and hip-hop and would also help better represent the BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) community among the presenter roster on Radio 3 although there is still a long way to go on network radio to properly mark the huge contribution that black British jazz musicians among other communities have made to the UK jazz scene from the heyday of Coleridge Goode and Joe Harriott through to the 2016 of Nérija and Peter Edwards.
Jez Nelson and Jazz on 3 delivered years of challenging and often brave programming to new audiences and veteran fans alike. The exploration of the shape of jazz to come and a willingness to embark on adventures in sound have always spurred on the show and in this sense the BBC will surely wish to respect this tradition as the Monday evening programme transitions under a new presenter this spring and enters a new potentially exciting phase. Stephen Graham