On Monday I decided to broaden my horizons and listen to a radio station other than Radio 4. This change was mainly motivated by the fact that it was 11.30 and Today in Parliament was on (now that the speaker is no longer Scottish I can't even enjoy the first few seconds; "Order! Order!" just isn't the same with John Bercow.) In view of this I decided to defect to Radio 3 and to, what I discovered later, was the ominously titled Jazz on 3.
Now I'm not saying I hate jazz but when my piano teacher told me that if I wanted to carry on taking Jazz Piano exams I should really listen to more jazz (preferably jazz involving pianos) I took to the decision to stop taking Jazz Piano exams. Why I ever made the decision to start taking Jazz Piano exams remains a mystery to me. However ignoring any past associations I decided to listen with an open mind. When the presenter announced that the next piece would involve a Hammond organ I forced myself to think "Goodie! Jazz organ, my favourite!" I managed to keep this optimism up for about three minutes before coming to the conclusion that Jazz on 3 wasn't really for me either. So I began retuning my MP3 player to see if there were was anything worth listening to on a different station and it did that thing were it kept tuning out of the station and then tuning back in which gave me the weird sensation of being followed by an irate improvising jazz-organist who really wanted me to listen to them play.
Finding nothing else of interest I returned to Radio 4 just in time for Finishing the Hat an interesting enough programme about Stephen Sondheim, although he did remind me quite a lot of the start of this fantastic Mitchell and Webb sketch, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YptTtb4VPA, especially as he kept on referencing Oscar Hammerstein. Whether or not I stray away from Radio 4 again remains to be seen, however if I do I will make sure to thoroughly check the programme schedules beforehand. I wouldn't want jazz to happen again by mistake.
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