Monthly Archives: March 2020

The Hot Box #057 – The Blakey Beat



In this episode of the Hot Box we celebrate the life and music of Art Blakey whose centennial was not so long ago. We find ourselves in very unfamiliar times, gigs and festivals have been cancelled the wold over which means no work for thousands of jazz musicians who rely on live performances to earn a crust. Perhaps we can help by purchasing their recordings so check out the Jazz Ireland Shop for a range of albums.

On a brighter note it’s always very exciting for me, and a personal pleasure to put up a brand new Irish album and to be able to give it a 5 STAR rating, in Hot Box 057 I get to do that twice.

The first new album is from Dr Linley Hamilton called “For The Record”, it really is a charming album and happily it seems to be getting a lot of well-deserved attention and praise.

The second new album is from Carole Nelson whom you will remember released her album “One Day in Winter” to a great deal of critical acclaim in 2017 and now she has done it again with “Arboreal”.

All of the albums mentioned here are available in the Jazz Ireland Shop where 100% of the revenue always goes direct to musicians.


The Hot Box #056 – A to Z of Jazz Piano Part 22 – The Letter W



Welcome to The Hot Box #056 where we delve into the Piano in the key of W. We are getting to the end of the piano files and who knows what comes next. The W file is a very big file with so many great players that we might run into two episodes, which it gives us an opportunity to hear some slightly longer pieces that we would have had to cut out for the sake of time.