When jazz was king
Three prominent local jazz figures came to Harvard last Thursday to discuss their work and their efforts over three decades to promote America’s signature musical sound. In an event sponsored by the Harvard Jazz Bands and the Office for the Arts’ Learning From Performers series, radio personalities Eric Jackson and Steve Schwartz, along with concert promoter Fred Taylor, explored their shared passion for the music. For almost 30 years, Schwartz and Jackson hosted weekly jazz radio programs on Boston’s WGBH radio. This past June, despite a bitter reaction from some fans, the station bumped Jackson’s show to the weekends and dropped Schwartz from its lineup to make way for news. Discussing the current state of the music, the panelists mourned the loss of jazz programming on local radio outlets. Jackson said that although younger generations are interested and eager to hear jazz, eliminating such programming means losing a critical avenue into the music. “To...