Jazz FM to play The Music That Made Me

A new eight-part series exploring the influences and important songs in the lives of Jazz FM’s superstar musicians starts this weekend.

The Music That Made Me is part of the Established 1990 season of programmes transmitting across the year.

Hosted by Nigel Williams, each weekly conversation explores their life as a musician with the songs that have made them the artist they are today.

Those in conversation across the first four weeks include Grammy winners Ramsey Lewis, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Kurt Elling, plus Jean-Paul ‘Bluey’ Maunick – founder of the UK jazz-funk trailblazers Incognito – while September will include episodes with Brit Jazz star Jamie Cullum and Gregory Porter, fresh from his performance of America The Beautiful at the launch of NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover.

Jazz FM’s Content Director Nick Pitts said of the new series: “Throughout 2020 – our 30th anniversary year – we’ve tried incredibly hard to create compelling programming and content around the music and artists that have made Jazz FM famous for.

“We’ve created documentaries around classic albums, revisited archive interviews with jazz legends and most recently worked with Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club to present some exclusive concerts, most recently George Benson from 2018.

“This new series throws the spotlight on those musicians who we listen to, day in, day out on Jazz FM and hear their stories through their own words and listen to the music that made them. There are some gripping stories in there that they’ve not told before.”