One of my compositions and recordings is a track selected by Alyn Shipton to form his album The Jazz Cafe on Air New Zealand flights during July and August 2014. So if you are flying Air NZ check it out! The track is called Chequered Days and was recorded for my MMus at Auckland University in 2010.
Alyn Shipton is the presenter of Jazz Record Requests for BBC Radio 3 and jazz critic for The Times in London. He began broadcasting with the Oxford independent station Fox FM in 1989, and soon afterwards made his first programmes for Radio 3. He has presented several jazz series for the station, including Impressions (with Brian Morton), Jazz Notes, Jazz File and Jazz Library. Previously for Jazzmatazz on the BBC World Service, he interviewed well over 200 of the world’s leading musicians. Alyn has written numerous books about jazz. He was Consultant Editor of the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, and co-authored the memoirs of Danny Barker, Doc Cheatham and George Shearing.
Groovin’ High, his life of Dizzy Gillespie, won the 1999 ARSC award for best jazz research. His monumental New History of Jazz won the “Writer of the Year” title in the British Jazz Awards. His other books include biographies of Cab Calloway, Ian Carr, Bud Powell, Fats Waller and the songwriter Jimmy McHugh. In 2003 he won the Willis Conover / Marian McPartland Award for Jazz Broadcasting, and in 2010, the Parliamentary Award for Jazz Broadcaster of the Year. Alyn has played jazz double bass since the 1970s and currently co-leads the Buck Clayton Legacy Band, playing music bequeathed to him by the great swing trumpeter.
