Tag Archives: piano

First Sunday January 2026 — Piano Jazz Classics

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This pro­gramme is now avail­able on Mix­cloud

After the hus­tle and stress of the Decem­ber hol­i­days, it was time to take a deep, cleans­ing breath and relax. Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio trav­elled to The Dick­ens Project Skat­ing Pond for Jan­u­ary 2026’s First Sun­day, as Cale­do­nia Sky­tow­er offered tunes for the soul — Clas­sics of Piano Jazz.

At Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio, we believe Sun­day after­noons are the per­fect time to treat your­self to some­thing spe­cial. That’s why we invite you to join us at 2pm SLT on the First Sun­day (usu­al­ly) after­noon of each month as we present a dif­fer­ent musi­cal treat: one hour of music on a theme. It could be any­thing from new age music, orches­tral clas­sics, sound­tracks, or music cel­e­brat­ing a par­tic­u­lar cul­ture.

Classics On The Keys

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Today we present a wealth of key­board pieces — pri­mar­i­ly on piano, harp­si­chord and organ, but you’ll hear some oth­er tra­di­tion­al key­board instru­ments too — both solo and with oth­er musi­cal forces back­ing them.

The main spread of the pro­gramme encom­pass­es the Baroque and Clas­si­cal peri­ods, but you’ll also hear some more mod­ern pieces includ­ing treat­ments of clas­si­cal pieces, and some engag­ing lit­tle 19th cen­tu­ry pieces that are less well-known. Most of the time, there is a clas­si­cal or baroque link in there some­where, even if it’s not imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous.Con­tin­ue read­ing→

Classics On The Keys

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Today, Wednes­day Jan­u­ary 18, we present a wealth of key­board pieces — pri­mar­i­ly on piano, harp­si­chord and organ, but you’ll hear some oth­er tra­di­tion­al key­board instru­ments too — both solo and with oth­er musi­cal forces back­ing them.

The main spread of the pro­gramme encom­pass­es the Baroque and Clas­si­cal peri­ods, but you’ll also hear some more mod­ern pieces includ­ing treat­ments of clas­si­cal pieces, and some engag­ing lit­tle 19th cen­tu­ry pieces that are less well-known. Most of the time, there is a clas­si­cal or baroque link in there some­where, even if it’s not imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous.Con­tin­ue read­ing→

Jazz On The Keys, feat. Warren Bernhardt

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Today, Sat­ur­day August 27nd, we’re pre­sent­ing a pro­gramme of key­boards-based Jazz. While many of the pieces we’re play­ing today fea­ture or include the piano, there are also some record­ings fea­tur­ing oth­er key­board instru­ments, includ­ing some inspir­ing pieces on syn­the­sis­er.

Today we are cel­e­brat­ing the life and music of jazz pianist War­ren Bern­hardt, who passed away ear­li­er in the week. We’ll be play­ing tracks from two of his albums on DMP Records, one of the first dig­i­tal labels, through­out the day: War­ren Bern­hardt Trio ’83 (1983) and Hands On (1987). You can read about him here. A mul­ti-tal­ent­ed key­board play­er across many gen­res, he will be sad­ly missed.

In addi­tion, keep an ear out for Alan Haven’s Image, a late-night Radio Car­o­line clos­ing tune back in the day; Cam­bridge-based David Rees-Williams and his tri­o’s inter­pre­ta­tions of clas­si­cal works; two albums by Bil­ly Bar­ber, one (Shades of Grey) on piano and the oth­er (Light­house) on elec­tron­ic instru­ments; and some mar­vel­lous per­for­mances by Ian Lynn includ­ing his clas­sic album For­got­ten Sum­mer.

Today is the last air­ing of the cur­rent edi­tion of “Where Have You Been?”, where this time, we vis­it The Nature Col­lec­tive. Full details here.

And don’t miss “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” every four hours from 4am Pacif­ic.

“Shai Mae­stro” by Nathan Bul­li­vant is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Jazz On The Keys

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Today, Sat­ur­day April 23rd, we’re pre­sent­ing a pro­gramme of key­boards-based Jazz. While many of the pieces we’re play­ing today fea­ture or include the piano, there are also some record­ings fea­tur­ing oth­er key­board instru­ments, includ­ing some inspir­ing pieces on syn­the­sis­er. Keep an ear out for Alan Haven’s Image, a late-night Radio Car­o­line clos­ing tune back in the day; Cam­bridge-based David Rees-Williams and his tri­o’s inter­pre­ta­tions of clas­si­cal works; two albums by Bil­ly Bar­ber, one (Shades of Grey) on piano and the oth­er (Light­house) on elec­tron­ic instru­ments; and some mar­vel­lous per­for­mances by Ian Lynn includ­ing his clas­sic album For­got­ten Sum­mer.

Don’t miss “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” every four hours from 4am Pacif­ic.

And check out our vis­it to the amaz­ing Seren­i­ty Val­ley in the lat­est episode of “Where Have You Been?”.

“Shai Mae­stro” by Nathan Bul­li­vant is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Piano-issimo

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Join us today for a pro­gramme of piano music — main­ly clas­si­cal but not entire­ly.

In addi­tion to some amaz­ing piano con­cer­tos and oth­er clas­si­cal works, we’ll also be play­ing pieces like the “Den­ham Con­cer­tos” — pieces writ­ten to cap­i­talise on the suc­cess of Richard Addin­sel­l’s War­saw Con­cer­to from the film Dan­ger­ous Moon­light (the film-mak­ers asked Rach­mani­nov to write a piece but he declined). These include Clive Richard­son’s Lon­don Fan­ta­sia, orig­i­nal­ly to be titled Coven­try Fan­ta­sia after the Mid­land city severe­ly dam­aged in the Blitz of Novem­ber 1940, but his pub­lish­ers told him that Lon­don would sell bet­ter. This tremen­dous work musi­cal­ly traces a day in the life of a city at war.

There are oth­er piano pieces from the movies too, but in addi­tion there’s light music, solo and orches­tral works, music-hall pieces arranged for piano, and much more. Do tune in!

Image: “piano keys” by mararie licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Jazz On The Keys

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Today, Wednes­day Jan­u­ary 5th, we’re pre­sent­ing a pro­gramme of Piano Jazz. Well, pri­mar­i­ly. While many of the pieces we’re play­ing today fea­ture or include the piano, there are also some record­ings fea­tur­ing oth­er key­board instru­ments, includ­ing some inspir­ing pieces on syn­the­sis­er — hence the broad title “Jazz On The Keys”. Keep an ear out for Alan Haven’s Image, a late-night Radio Car­o­line clos­ing tune back in the day; Cam­bridge-based David Rees-Williams and his tri­o’s inter­pre­ta­tions of clas­si­cal works; two albums by Bil­ly Bar­ber, one (Shades of Grey) on piano and the oth­er (Light­house) on elec­tron­ic instru­ments; and some mar­vel­lous per­for­mances by Ian Lynn includ­ing his clas­sic album For­got­ten Sum­mer.

Don’t miss “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” every four hours from 4am Pacif­ic.

“Where Have You Been?” is cur­rent­ly on hia­tus: Sea­son 2 will begin short­ly.

“Shai Mae­stro” by Nathan Bul­li­vant is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Classics On The Keys

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Today, Sat­ur­day Octo­ber 15th, we present a wealth of key­board pieces — pri­mar­i­ly on piano, harp­si­chord and organ, but you’ll hear some oth­er tra­di­tion­al key­board instru­ments too — both solo and with oth­er musi­cal forces back­ing them.

The main spread of the pro­gramme encom­pass­es the Baroque and Clas­si­cal peri­ods, but you’ll also hear some more mod­ern pieces includ­ing treat­ments of clas­si­cal pieces, and some engag­ing lit­tle 19th cen­tu­ry pieces that are less well-known. Most of the time, there is a clas­si­cal or baroque link in there some­where, even if it’s not imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous.Con­tin­ue read­ing→