I’ll mention it later in one of the questions, but often there are times the artists receive all the accolades and there’s not enough homage paid to the people who help put the music together and put it out there… sound engineers, publicists, graphic designers, photographers, etc Radio personalities are a crucial part of getting the music out to the public and exposing new artists. Ruth Fisher has been a jazz radio personality in the UK since the ’90s interviewing many greats such as Jason Moran, Gregory Porter, and more. She hosts two shows on Jazz FM, Full Circle which airs 2:00 on Sundays in the UK and The Performance Series which airs Monday at 21:00. She was kind enough to sit down and speak with me about her love for jazz, when she started radio, and much much more
Can you tell us a little about your love for jazz? When did you first fall in love with the music, and how long have you been an avid fan?
I come from a musical family on my mother’s side so music was always and still is an integral part of my life! My great Uncle Aneurin Thomas was a well-known music teacher and bandleader in Caerphilly (South Wales) and probably my first love of jazz came from him! I would often visit him and his wife during school holidays and there would always be some jazz playing in the house. (This is an article about him celebrating his 105th birthday in 2010!) I was also fortunate enough to have my musical education at the internationally famous Purcell School of Music although when I attended it, there wasn’t a jazz department..there is now! My mum would always take me to concerts but one that really sealed my love of jazz was seeing Ella Fitzgerald and then Lionel Hampton with my first introduction to the vibraphone! That was it – I was hooked!
Before working as a radio host, where you involved in the world of jazz in any other capacity? What made you decide to become a radio host?
I always loved the medium of radio and with the influx of pirate radio stations in London of black music in the ’80s, I would always be listening to stations such as KJazz or Kiss as they were playing the music that wasn’t on the BBC or other commercial stations. But my broadcasting career started on a pirate station in Jerusalem in the ’90s. I had my own weekly jazz-funk and soul show as well as being the ‘producer’ for the late Arnie Lawrence (the American saxophonist and educator who performed with Charles Mingus, Duke Pearson, Chico Hamilton, Willie Bobo and was the Founder of the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in NYC) who had also moved to Israel at that time, and who had a weekly jazz show on this same pirate radio station. I always remember the first tune he played, Horace Silver’s Song For My Father and when it finished, he turned round to me live on air, and said ‘so what did you hear?’ I was totally flummoxed as I didn’t understand what and why he was asking me that. But later on, I realized he was asking me to open my ears and listen. That has been a really valuable lesson for me as a presenter.
Often it’s the artists who receive all the glory for the music, but there’s a whole community of people who help keep the music vibrant and healthy, radio hosts such as yourself being an integral part of that community. You all do interviews, keep the music in heavy rotation, and you have to know many facts about the artists’ products as well as keep up with all the latest new releases. It’s a lot of work! Can you maybe give us an idea of the work that goes into putting together a show such as yours?
I present two shows each week, one focusing entirely on new releases and interviews and the other is live music only. Every day I am sent new releases either digitally or hard copy CDs. I try to listen to each release that is sent to me to decide whether it is something that will fit the format of the shows. I curate each show as I am not playlisted and I don’t have a producer. Over the week I will put the show together, upload and build it and then I will put together my notes on each release ready to voice track. Once the show has been broadcast, I will then upload it to mixcloud and once a week, send out my playlist to my distribution list of promoters, festival organizers, musicians, etc. When it comes to interviews, I make sure to do the necessary research into who I am interviewing and will put together a series of questions that I use to base the interview around. That’s it in a nutshell! It is a lot of work but I have to admit I still get that thrill of hearing new music every week!
What are some of the challenges facing not just jazz radio stations, but radio stations today?
I think the biggest challenge for all stations is to keep their own identity and not go down the route of sounding like the next commercial station. There is far more opportunity for listeners to go online with access to hundreds of playlists so the station and its presenters must have personality, character and a true knowledge and love of the music being played rather than sounding like the next station with the same playlist format and presenters who are just announcers.
Maybe we can go down memory lane for a bit. What are some of your most memorable interviews as well as some albums that stick out over the course of your career?
I’ve interviewed literally hundreds of musicians and I’ve enjoyed chatting to every single one of them! Some of them have been well-established musicians such as Christian McBride, Al Jarreau, Jeff Tain Watts, Kenny Garrett, Kurt Elling, Gary Bartz, Harold Mabern, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Peter Erskine, Bob Mintzer, Fred Hersch, Rene Marie, Carmen Lundy and more. But I also love interviewing artists who are less well known or who are at the start of their careers such as Christian Sands, Alicia Olatuja, Jazzmeia Horn, but I guess the one that really stands out for me was doing the first-ever UK interview with Gregory Porter just after he released his first and in my opinion, his best album Water! And sometimes there just happens to be a personal click during the interview which develops into personal friendships and with the wonders of modern technology, namely Whatsapp, I can keep in touch with people like Joe Locke, Jazzmeia Horn and John Beasley regularly!
Albums that have stood out for me:
Steve Williamson – Waltz For Grace
Jason Moran – All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller
Geri Allen – The Life of a Song
Herbie Hancock – Maiden Voyage
Abbey Lincoln – The Music is The Magic
John Coltrane – A Love Supreme
Leon Foster Thomas – Metamorphosis
Orphy Robinson – The Vibes Describe
Jacques Schwarz-Bart – Jazz Racine Haiti
Jazzmeia Horn – A Social Call.
George Shearing Quintet with Nancy Wilson – The Swinging’s Mutual
Miles Davis – U ‘n’ I
Who are some of your current favorite albums/artists out there?
Etienne Charles – Carnival, the Sound of A People
Aubrey Johnson – Unravelled
Charlie Porter – Immigration Nation
Lakecia Benjamin – Pursuance The Coltrane’s
Sarah Tandy – Infection in the Sentence
Alicia Olatuja – Intuition: Songs from The Minds of Women
How do you feel the jazz music of the U.K. is similar and different from that of the U.S. in terms of the sounds and the scenes themselves?
The difference between the UK and the US scene is where immigration has influenced the local scene by fusing the music from their diaspora with local music and the American jazz songbook. For instance, the 1980s saw the emergence of the groundbreaking group The Jazz Warriors (Courtney Pine, Steve Williamson, Orphy Robinson, Cleveland Watkiss) who incorporated the sounds of their Caribbean immigrant parents into an unapologetic rootsier sound mixed with the classic American jazz songbook. And this became known as a uniquely British sound. At the same time, another movement grew up which was based more on a European classical sound, championed by the ECM label. Move forward some 30 years and there is now a stronger migration from the African Diaspora to the UK and that identity has become the focus of the younger generation who mix a more West African Fela Kuti inspired sound into the sounds of today. Another aspect is that the free/improv scene is much bigger in the UK (and Europe) providing all year round touring for musicians from both sides of the Atlantic.
As a presenter, I have found that recordings from the American bands/musicians seem to have a more polished and tighter sound and this is transferred to interviews and performances.
For our audience members not based in the U.K. can you give us some recommendations for the best jazz clubs to check out while visiting?
In London, there’s Cafe Oto, Vortex, Church of Sound, Jazz Refreshed, The Spice and Jazz in the Round at the Cockpit Theatre. Outside of London, there’s Band On The Wall in Manchester, the Conservatoire in Birmingham, the Royal Welsh Academy of Music and Dance. Of course, there are also Ronnie Scotts and the Pizza Express Live Music venues and if you are looking for a bit of soul and funk, I highly recommend The Hideaway in south London.
I know right now we have a pandemic going on globally, but any plans to cross the pond and make a guest appearance in the big apple?
Believe it or not, I have never been to New York but I have had invites! Once this pandemic is over and we hopefully will have returned to some sort of normalcy, I will definitely be over to savor that New York experience!
It was truly a pleasure to sit down and get to know more about Ms. Fisher during this interview and I hope more people will tune in to JazzFM to check out her programs!
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