The Essay: Jazz among the British

The Essay: Jazz Among the British

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Jazz Among the British: Stan Tracey

Stan Tracey

Jazz Among the British

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Jazz Among the British, Stan Tracey

Geoffrey Smith on the work of Stan Tracey, paragon of British jazz and of jazz in Britain.

Geoffrey Smith continues his series on changing perceptions of jazz in Britain, with a closer look at celebrated British pianist and composer Stan Tracey.

Writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Smith continues his series on the changing perceptions of jazz in Britain, by taking a closer look at the celebrated British pianist and composer Stan Tracey. 

Stan was an abiding presence in Geoffrey's jazz media life, as reviewer and interviewer, and Geoffrey thinks of him not just as a paragon of British jazz, but of jazz in Britain. He was the real thing, a jazz muso to the bone, totally committed to the music. And to him that's what it was. He once told Geoffrey that when he went out to a gig, he didn't say to himself "I'm going to play some jazz", but "I'm going to play some music." Jazz was his music virtually from the time he heard it, trailing down the stairs from the flat above his family home. His route to jazz keyboard went through an accordion - with which he happily played pass-the-hat gigs in pub - to achieving his own style on piano, following trips to New York as a member of shipboard bands in ‘Geraldo's Navy’. He later became house pianist at Ronnie's Scott's and a musician's favourite - the great Sonny Rollins once asked, "does anyone here realise how good he is?" Geoffrey pays tribute to a British player with an unmistakably quirky, determined personal style.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Veteran broadcaster Geoffrey Smith reflects on different perceptions of jazz in Britain.

Radio 3's veteran jazz broadcaster Geoffrey Smith reflects on different perceptions of jazz in Britain, filtered through his own experience as an American settling in the UK.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Jazz Among the British

Stan Tracey

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3