Hot Air
with Margaret Gallagher

Join us on Saturday afternoon when Jen Hodge joins us to play some of her favourite tracks - old and new! The young bassist and singer is part of the  Company B Jazz Band and also leads her own band of all stars. She'll tell us how she got interested in older styles of jazz and about recording with equipment from the dawn of the 2oth century. The Jen Hodge All Stars are playing at Winterruption 2013 next Saturday afternoon.

This week on Hot Air we'll kick off BC's first ever Family Day long weekend with jazz made by....families. There's plenty of great music by artists who have more than just a professional relationship. From the Arntzens to the Jensens and the Dorsey brothers to the Marsalis clan - great musicianship is often a relative thing.

We're really looking forward to having Hugh Fraser in the Hot Air studio. The award-winning multi-instrumentalist, composer, band leader and teacher is as charismatic in person as he is in music. We'll channel some of his creative energy onto the airwaves this Saturday afternoon when he plays us some of his favourite tracks and tells us what he's up to now that's he's back in Vancouver.


The VEJI Reunion is at Pat's Pub on Friday, February 15 at 9:00 pm

Vancouver-raised, New York-based saxophonist Michael Blake is our guest. He's won international acclaim for his many adventures in jazz. Blake has a brand new album with his Canadian band, The Variety Hour. Blake joins us for his own variety hour, and he'll give us a preview the new album "In the Grand Scheme of Things."

This BC native calls Toronto home these days, but he's on a Canadian tour now and he'll drop by the Hot Air studio when he hits town. He's pulled together some of his favourite tracks for a long awaited Gods and Goddesses session.

Ross died on January 9th after after living with cancer for several years. He was just 45 years old.
Ross Taggart touched many lives, through his music and through his generousity of spirit. He was one of those rare people who are both admired for their talent and loved as a person. We'll pay tribute to the musician and the man, with help from his dear friends, Campbell Ryga and Sharon Minemoto.We hope you can join us.
If you like to know more about Ross, tributes have been pouring in from across the country and around the world. Some of those are collected in a great blog posting on cbcmusic.ca


Here's our tribute to Ross.


You can hear a tribute to Ross on The Early Edition here, as well as an interview from June, 2012.

Below, you can listen to Ian McDougall recall meeting Ross for the first time, recorded at the Our Friend Ross benefit concert.

It's time for our annual "getaway from it all show" - where we play music to help you forget about the bleak mid-winter weather waiting outside your door.
All you have to do is cozy up to the radio and bask in our warm and gentle jazz. No borders to cross, no customs lines to wait in.

We're saying goodbye to 2012 by looking back on one of our big milestones -  turning 65 years old!. BC's jazz show first hit the airwaves on May 23, 1947. For our birthday broadcast we uncovered rare archival treasures and called on some special guests to help us look back on almost seven decades of great jazz. Please join us for an encore presentation of Hot Air's 65 anniversary show this Saturday afternoon.

The legendary bandleader has a busy schedule ahead. There's his 76th consecutive New Year's Eve gig, he's playing with Vancouver Symphony Orchestra come January and ...he's turning 95 years old in just a couple of weeks. We'll celebrate Vancouver's King of Swing, when Dal Richards pops by to share some tunes and some memories. Break out the bubbly!