In honour of International Jazz Day (April 30) I’ve decided to post about one of my favourite topics: jazz in print. One of the interesting things about researching anything historical is that at some point you get to examine old newspapers, and, headaches caused by badly photographed newspapers/badly calibrated microfilm machines aside, it was a lot […]

This week I’ve been in Stockton California taking up the Brubeck Collection Travel Grant I was awarded last September. I was researching his quartet’s tours to New Zealand in the 1960s and the genesis of his piece Maori Blues. The collection is an amazing resource for researchers that was endowed by Dave and Iola Brubeck […]

Jazz groups had been a regular feature of New Zealand broadcasting since the industry’s earliest days. However, until World War Two, the majority of broadcasts were relays from cabarets, dance halls, and other venues, rather than from the studio. Studio broadcasts became increasingly popular from the mid–1930s, and by the late 1940s, would become the […]