Marc Antoine in the studio tomorrow

Tomorrow's live show will have Marc Antoine as a guest in the studio.

Marc is in London to play four nights at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in Dean Street, W1. Monday 23rd to Thursday 26th February.

Also playing at Pizza Express with Marc will be Oli Silk on keyboards, Greg Grainger from Acoustic Alchemy on drums and Frank Felix on bass.

The Thursday show is sold out. At the time of writing there still some seats available for the Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday shows.

Videos from Sky.fm Smooth Jazz Week

Whether you were there or not, you can relive the experience of the first ever Sky.fm Smooth Jazz Week at the Pizza Express Jazz Club any time you like by watching the selection of videos featured below.

If you click the arrows either side of the main frame or the little widget next to the play button on the bottom bar you'll see that there are 8 videos in all, which is around three quarters of an hour of footage, so pour yourself something appropriate, turn up the sound and have a blast.

Marc Antoine at Pizza Express

Hot on the heels of the Sky.fm Smooth Jazz Week (which was an absolute blast by the way), I'm pleased to announce that Sky.fm is presenting another series of shows in February at the famous Pizza Express Jazz Club in London's West End starring the one and only Marc Antoine.

It will be the first time that Marc has played in the UK for more than 5 years so don't delay reserving your seat if you don't want to miss him as there are only 4 shows.

The dates are Monday 23rd February - Thursday 26 February and Pizza Express are taking bookings here:


Pizza Express Jazz Club Bookings

You can also reserve seats over the phone on 020 7734 3220.

Marc will be accompanied by Oli Silk on keyboards, Frank Felix on bass and Greg Grainger from Acoustic Alchemy on drums.

The Future of Car Radio

Well it's obviously going to take a while but it looks like the future of car radio is going to begin a transformation this year. It was always going to happen of course but Blaupunkt are about to launch an in-car Internet radio receiver, that will mean that you will no longer be restricted by geographic location when it comes to your radio listening choice.

The device will rely on your mobile phone and bluetooth to receive the stations and will therefore be subject to your mobile phone network supplying the streaming facility. Of course in the USA this is already happening with some people and networks, although you do have to have to be reasonably savvy in the ways of technology to make it happen, but the forthcoming Blaupunkt units (and those that will ultimately follow) will streamline the process and make it a bit easier to do. At the moment it can be a little clunky to set it all up.

Of course in the UK only millionaires can currently dream of such things as the mobile companies rob us blind with call charge packages and the financial implications of choosing to listen to all of your in-car entertainment over the Internet don't bear thinking about, but obviously that will change... eventually.

Interesting times ahead then. The Blaupunkt systems will operate in conjunction with miRoamer, who, you'll be pleased to know already list Sky.fm Smooth Jazz amongst their featured stations (and all the other Sky channels for that matter).

More details on the Wired Blog, or if you Google "Blaupunkt Internet Radio" you should find plenty of dialogue about the whole thing.

Revised Show Times for Sky.fm Smooth Jazz Week

Pizza Express Jazz Club have changed some of their opening/show times this year. This mainly affects the weekday shows but below is a list of all of the times of our shows on the Sky.fm Smooth Jazz week.

Wednesday 21 Jan Doors 7.00pm, Show 8.30pm
Thursday 22 Jan Doors 7.00pm, Show 8.30pm
Friday 23 Jan Early Doors 6.00pm, Show 7.30pm
Friday 23 Jan Late Doors 10.00pm, Show 10.30pm
Saturday 24 Jan Early Doors 6.00pm, Show 7.30pm
Saturday 24 Jan Late Doors 10.00pm, Show 10.30pm
Sunday 25 Jan Doors 6.30, Show 8.00pm

If you haven't booked a table yet, don't forget that you can now do so online:

Pizza Express Jazz Club

You can also book over the phone on 020 7734 3220 (0044 20 7734 3220).

Tickets are selling well so don't delay. To everybody who has already booked, many thanks for supporting the first Sky.fm Smooth Jazz event at Pizza Express.

It's support like that which means that we can bring more smooth jazz artists to the UK.

Looking forward to meeting lots of friendly faces in what is now less than two weeks away!

Best wishes,

Jimi King

Oli Silk's Christmas Visit

For anybody that missed it, here's the video of the Sky.fm Smooth Jazz live show on 14th December 2008, featuring Oli Silk.

The Best of 2008

Ok here's my list of the top smooth jazz tracks from the year gone by. As always I stress that this is MY list, and not compiled from any charts, sales or the suchlike. Feel free to disregard and/or disagree with it.

1. Kim Waters – Distant Lover
2. Jessy J – Tequila Moon
3. Tim Bowman – Soul Dream
4. Michael Lington – Chuva
5. Fourplay – The Whistler
6. Streetwize – Mary Jane (All Night Long)
7. Vibes Alive – After Hours
8. Kenny G – Besame Mucho
9. Jaared – Piccadilly Circus
10. Oli Silk – Chill Or Be Chilled
11. Jessy J – Poetry Man
12. The Sax Pack – The Sax Pack
13. Joyce Cooling – Come And Get It
14. Bob Baldwin – Third Wind
15. Michael Lington – You & I
16. Dave Koz – Life In The Fast Lane
17. Earl Klugh – Sleepy Head
18. Oli Silk – De-Stress Signal
19. Paul Hardcastle – Dancing Lights
20. Andre Delano – More Than Words Can Say
21. Jaared - Cruising The Strip
22. Nate Harasim – Love’s Taken Over
23. Warren Hill – La Dolce Vita
24. Paul Hardcastle – Return Of The Rainman
25. Gerald Albright – Cheaper To Keep Her

Surprise Guest Renato Falaschi

Listeners and Viewers of the Sunday live show were treated to a surprise visit from Renato Falaschi today.

It was a special treat as he played live in the studio to a backing track he'd let me have earlier in the week. The song has no name as yet, but as you can see and hear if you click below, it's coming along nicely.



Renato is part of our line up for the Sky.fm Smooth Jazz Week in January at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in London.

Sky.fm Smooth Jazz Week

Hey, we've done it. The world's biggest smooth jazz station is putting on some gigs! The first ones are in London, England with 7 shows over 5 nights at the famous Pizza Express Jazz Club in London's Soho.

Starring Jaared, Oli Silk, Rocco Ventrella & Renato Falaschi. Four artists, One stage. The dates are January 21st through to January 25th.

These guys will be backed by Bruce Nazarian (guitar), Frank Felix (bass) and Greg Grainger (drums), so Acoustic Alchemy fans will doubtless want to come too!

It's the biggest smooth jazz event in the UK for several years and you can reserve seats NOW on the Pizza Express Jazz Club Website, so don't miss out. Places are going fast. You can also reserve seats on the phone. call Pizza Express on 020 7734 3220 (outside the UK dial 0044 20 7734 3220).

Pizza Express Jazz Club is at 10 Dean Street, London, W1D 3RW.

Peter White Interview now available

It seems like quite a few people missed Peter White's visit to the live show studio last week, so if you are one of those who were not present then worry no more, here it is. The frame rate is a little jumpy unfortunatley, but the audio is great so enjoy!

Update on the live show today

Sorry to report that Jaared will be unable to attend the live show today.

Peter White is still coming though, so be sure to join us. We'll be using a different camera angle too, which might come as a surprise to regular viewers. The visit by Oli Silk a few weeks back highlighted the fact that our current camera has such a wide angle view that in its regular position it tends to give the guest a somewhat "leprechaun" like quality.

So for the duration of the show today the view will be very much "face on".

Yeah I know, scary thought.

Peter White & Jaared on the Live Show this Week

Make a date in your diary for this Sunday and the live show as there'll be two guests in the studio because both Peter White and Jarred will be popping in for a chat.

So please come to the party, and if you are a member of Facebook, then make sure that you're friends with Sky Smooth Jazz, then you can use the Facebook chat facility to send messages straight through to the guys in the studio.

The show is at 12 noon US EST, 9AM Pacific and 5PM GMT

Some New Sky.fm Smooth Jazz Wallpaper

More doodling downtime in the office a couple of weeks back resulted in a new slice of wallpaper which I'd thought I'd share with Sky Smooth Jazz fans.

It features a sort of 3d version of the Sky logo on a very funky blue background and should fit all desktops up to 1400 pixels wide. Just be sure to set it to "center" rather than "stretch" when you set it up otherwise it will probably appear squashed up.

Click on the thumbnail below to go to the full size version (note that Firefox users will probably have to click once more on the bigger one as FF tends to auto reduce things to fit browser windows these days).

Oli Silk played live in the studio

Oli Silk paid another visit to the Sunday Live Show today and brought along some tracks from his forthcoming CD "The Limit's the Sky". He also played along live to "Deuces Wild" too. Here's how it went.

The Smooth Jazz 'Hot' Parade

I thought it would be a good way of keeping you up to date on what's hot amongst the recent stuff to hit the playlist on Sky.fm Smooth Jazz. So here are the current top ten, as decreed by me and our lovely listeners, both on the forums and on the live Sunday show. This list has nothing to do with sales. It's all to do with feedback and what basically gives us a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I can't say when the list will be updated, but here's the selection that's currently special around the end of August.

1. Gerald Albright - I Stand Accused
2. Vibes Alive - After Hours
3. Paul Hardcastle - Marimba
4. Nate Harasim - Loves Taken Over
5. Michael Lington - You & I
6. Tim Bowman - Sweet Sundays
7. Oli Silk - Chill or Be Chilled (Remix)
8. Dave Koz - Life In The Fast Lane
9. Andre Delano - More Than Words Can Say
10. Dave Stewart/Candy Dulfer - Lily Was Here

We now have a group on Facebook

There's now a Sky.fm Smooth Jazz Live Show Group at Facebook.com. You can find it here:

Sky.fm Smooth Jazz Live Show Facebook Group

We also have a facebook identity in the name of "Sky Smooth Jazz". You can hopefully use this as another way of sending messages to the studio during the live show with the Facebook chat facility. To be able to interact in this way you need to add Sky Smooth Jazz to your friends here:

Sky Smooth Jazz

Of course you can also chat with other mutual friends at the same time as well.

New Live Show Special Edition Mugs

A few of our regulars asked about the possibility of special "Sunday live show" mugs a while back. Some people also expressed a desire for some Caesar mugs too.

So I guess these ought to make everybody happy! The view shows them front and back.

Get them here

New Live show vid on Youtube

If you missed it you'll be pleased to know that Jaared's visit to the studio for the live show a couple of weeks back is now up and running on Youtube. Link follows.

Jaared on Sky.fm Smooth Jazz

Peter White in The UK

We don't get many smooth jazz artists that make it across the Atlantic to the UK, but Peter White makes it back to his homeland at least once a year and he always brings Jaared along on Sax too. So for the benefit of anyone here in the UK who doesn't already know, they'll both be here as from April 28th with several nights at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in London's Soho, plus a couple of extra dates at The Stables in Milton Keynes and 1 Club in Ascot. PW will also have his brother Danny (of Matt Bianco) on keyboards.

I'll be attending the Pizza Express gig on Thursday May 1st and look forward to meeting any Sky.fm Smooth Jazz listeners who can make it along. Links to book tickets are below:

Pizza Express Jazz Club
The Stables
1 Club

Some classy wallpaper for your desktop

OK so there I was playing around with some graphics and one thing led to another and I ended up with some new Sky.fm wallpaper (I guess I should get out more).

Anyway it's a sort of gold plated on a wooden background kinda thing. Not everybody's cup of tea I know, but it's definitely my kinda thing and for me it represents the fact that we are indeed the classiest smooth jazz outfit around, so if it takes your fancy too then just click on the thumbnail below to get the full size picture.



Once loaded (and make sure your browser hasn't downsized it) then right click and select "Set as Background" to save it to your desktop. Make sure you have it set to "center" as opposed to "stretch" or "tile".

Assuming you've done it correctly it'll fit nicely on all screens up to 1280x1024.

Best of 2007

Just finished the "Best of 2007" show, where we play the finest selection from the past year. I should stress that they are the finest according to me, and not any chart or list produced from sales or radio play. So feel free to disagree with me. I ended up with a top 25 this year, as I was unable to whittle it down any further!

Best Smooth Jazz tracks of 2007

1. Rick Braun, Richard Elliot – Q It Up
2. Brian Simpson – Above The Clouds
3. Everette Harp – Juke Joint
4. Euge Groove – A Summer Nights Dream
5. Renato Falaschi – Just The Way You Are
6. Acoustic Alchemy – Carlos The King
7. Euge Groove – Religify
8. Jimmy Sommers, Paul Brown – Happy Days
9. U-Nam – Turn Your Love Around
10. Rick Braun, Richard Elliot – RNR
11. Euge Groove – Born 2 Groove
12. Everette Harp - Don’t Look Any Further
13. Brian Simpson – Whatcha Gonna Do?
14. Kim Waters – Inseparable
15. Marc Antoine – For A Smile
16. Ken Navarro – Lucky
17. Kim Waters – Got To Give It Up
18. Acoustic Alchemy – Only In My Dreams
19. Brian Simpson – The Last Kiss
20. Jaared – Your Smile
21. Paul Brown – White Sand
22. Nils – Dreamin’
23. Mark Antoine – Forever
24. Chuck Loeb – Good To Go
25. Norman Brown – Let’s Take A Ride

Miles Gilderdale Video

The video of the interview last Sunday with Miles Gilderdale from Acoustic Alchemy is now available on YouTube for anybody who missed it.

You can find it at the following link:

Miles Gilderdale - Acoustic Alchemy

Sky.fm Listeners

Many moons ago we started a Frappr map, which allows us to see where all our listeners are. It also allows everybody to post up some pictures and leave a comment or two, so I thought it might be a good idea to re-create it here (truth be told I just found out that it was possible!).

So here it is. Feel free to click around and add yourself. Most of the buttons become fairly obvious when you click them. If you click the one that says "Stats, Pics & Map Members" at the bottom you can open up the whole darn Frappr page in all its glory and have a real ball!

Oli Silk Visit Now On You Tube

For the benefit of anybody who missed it (or who wants to see it again), Oli Silks visit to the show on December 16th is now on YouTube.

Actually if I've comprehended their swanky new custom player thingy properly then you'll find both parts of it below, along with his visit with Jaared a few months earlier. I even chose a sort of Sky.fm color scheme for the whole presentation too! Just click a thumbnail on the right to view one of the other videos. Hey it works too! How cool is that?

Miles Gilderdale Interview

There was a bit of a mix up over the date for the interview with Miles from Acoustic Alchemy last week. As a result he'll be visiting the studio THIS Sunday 30th December, so please do check out the live show for that one.

Because of that change in plans I'll do the "Best Songs of 2007" the following week (January 6th).

Christmas Guests

It's looking like we're going to be lucky enough to have some talent from the world of smooth jazz passing our way on the Sunday live video show as things get a little festive.

All being well, tomorrow (the 16th) Oli Silk is going to be dropping in, and the following Sunday (the 23rd) we'll be having a visit from Miles Gilderdale of Acoustic Alchemy.

So make a date in your diary for the live show on Sky.fm Smooth Jazz, this and every Sunday 5pm London time, Midday New York and 9am in LA.

Sky.fm Smooth Jazz Mugs 'n' Stuff

Regular listeners to the live show have been enquiring about Sky.fm branded goods for some time now.

I'm pleased to say they are now available, and what's more there are even some things that are specific to the smooth jazz channel too.



If you want to bookmark the Sky.fm Store you'll find the ever expanding selection of goodies here.

Bruce Was Back in Town

It was good to see Bruce Nazarian back in London a couple of Sundays ago.

We took the opportunity to have a chat on the show and do some catch up on Rocco's CD. It turns out that the CD is one of those being considered for a Grammy nomination.

You can find out more in the video archive of that chat by clicking the link below.

Bruce Nazarian

A Visit from Jaared and Oli Silk

I was pleased to have a couple of guests on the show on Sunday. Peter White was in town this past week and had Jaared and Oli Silk on stage with him throughout. They all had a show out in Southend on Sunday afternoon but Jaared & Oli made it back to West London in time to pop in for a visit before moving on to Pizza Express in Soho.

Thanks to last minute permission from Les Cutmore at Trippin 'n' Rythym Records we were allowed to air a couple of tracks from Jaared's forthcoming CD "Addiction", which will be out in February 2008.

Wanna see that visit and hear those exclusive tracks? just click below...

Jaared and Oli Silk on Sky.fm

New Camera for the Studio

Well Summer has been and gone (jury's out on whether it was ever actually here in the UK) and as the availability of daylight diminishes I thought it was time to upgrade the studio camera to something that could deal with low light situations better.

Thankfully Logitech have recently come up with one featuring a Carl Zeiss lens and special light adjusting software that should hopefully make all the difference. I tested it out during the week and it looks good.

Below you can see a screen grab, and regular viewers will notice that it also gives a wider view of the studio so you should also be able to see an extra monitor screen that was previously out of camera shot.

The real road test is today so join us today at 12 noon US EST, 9AM Pacific, 5PM GMT.

The live show address is, as always http://www.sky.fm/liveshow/