Smooth Jazz

The hottest contemporary jazz artists in a smooth-flowing soundscape, featuring melodic and stylish guitars, saxophones, pianos, trumpets. It creates a superb background sound full of melodies and modern textures. Featured artists include Boney James, Chris Botti, David Koz, Fourplay, Diana Krall, Warren Hill, George Howard, Jeff Lorber, Joe Sample, Kenny G, Spyro Gyra, Najee, and Paul Hardcastle.

Smooth Jazz Programmer Jim Craig has been in Canadian broadcasting for over four decades, including twenty years on-air as a radio and TV personality. He is a jazz musicologist and full-time Professor of Radio/TV Studies with the School of Communication Arts at Seneca College in Toronto where he helps train the next generation of budding broadcasters. Jim is also a broadcast consultant and talent coach to radio clients across Canada.

When he was asked to help launch Canada’s first “smooth jazz” radio station, WAVE 94.7, he knew he had found his musical home. Originally, it was Dave Brubeck’s collaboration with Paul Desmond on the classic album “Time Out”, and Wes Montgomery’s guitar licks on “Road Song”, that first got him hooked on a new and easier form of jazz. Years later, as the sign-on Program Director for THE WAVE, Jim recalls: “In the late eighties, a radio format emerged, with players like Bob James, George Benson, and Pat Metheny melded into a blend of modern, rhythmic, relaxing jazz music, and it made me want to program smooth jazz radio.” Jim explains, “Smooth jazz is a non-aggressive, non-intrusive, music genre that is compelling to listeners of any age”, and he describes it as “the new easy-listening musical form for the twenty-first century”.

His expertise in the format, and passion for the music, brought him to Galaxie/Stingray in 2001 to develop the Smooth Jazz Channel, which he has programmed ever since.