’Round Midnight with Soweto Kinch
The Fire Station, Sunderland
24th July 2025. Documented retrospectively, 21 December 2025
Today is December 21st, the Winter Solstice. Christmas Day is but a stone's throw away, and there are a handful of intoxicated bottles to my left, waiting to be engulfed in giftwrap.
My BBC Proms marathon is now a few months behind me, and I am, honestly, trying to let it go with the dignity it deserves. One problem though: it ain't complete.
That's right, due to the limitation of the broadcasts, it was not possible to cover every Prom in real time. This quest will never be wholly complete, though I guess the most meaningful quests never are. This particular Prom was recorded for radio, but its broadcast was not released until mid-October. It was then when I took the chance to download it. [Good job I did; looks like they've since taken it down.] And it is not until today, that I have gotten the motivation to transfer the mp3 file to a USB stick and shove it into my HiFi.
Before all this, I was never a big Radio 3 listener. Classic FM (don't judge me) does tend to be more 'accessible' for the fledgling Classical listener such as I, where an off-the-cuff tune in to Radio 3 can often feel like one has intruded on a church choral service, at a rather inopportune moment. Where every slot is the graveyard slot, so to speak. But there is evidently some more to BBC Radio 3 than first meets the eye. The Proms, of course. And other hidden gems such as 'Round Midnight with Soweto Kinch, which puts its focus on Jazz, rather than Classical. If I'm honest, this is the type of programme I would expect to be enjoying on Radio 2, rather than Radio 3. But I suppose someone decided there needs to be some element of 'spice' to 3's programming.
This is one of the BBC's 'levelling up' Proms, having being hosted in Sunderland, as opposed to the Royal Albert Hall in London. Most of the Proms outside of the capital, I've noticed, have been of the more 'accessible' type, which I'm not sure if I take as unintentionally patronising. Still...
Jazz is another genre of music that I have acquired a taste for in my thirties.The first act, whom with my ear I hear as Ruth somebody-or-other [later find out it is Rivkala], opens with a jazz that is electronic and 'modern'. Removed from the Miles Davis type sound that makes me want to pour out a glass of Scotch, but certainly influenced by it.
Next up it's the Joe Webb Trio, and their sound is more piano-centric. Chimes very much form the same billboard as Dave Brubeck, including walking lines on the double-bass [or should that be running lines?] As it happens, they are celebrating 100 years since the birth of Oscar Peterson.
Finally there is an offering from Theo Croker, who introduces a trumpet lead into the proceedings, which are again the modern/electro sort of jazz sounds.
Oppenheimer is on BBC 2 in half an hour. I'm off to check that out.
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