Matt Silver

Jazz 88ers,

KSDS is facing an emergency, and we need your help. You already know the broad strokes. Federal funding’s gone. More specifically, we will be without $200,000 we were relying on to operate. We still need it; it's just not coming. 

This "Now's the Time" campaign is not a membership drive. Membership drives are doctor’s visits you make even when you’re well, to stay well. This is more akin to emergency surgery… without insurance.

The only political candidate in which this all-jazz-and-blues public radio station has ever taken any interest is Dizzy Gillespie. And, even then, we waited 60 years before issuing an official endorsement — you know, just to be safe. Pictured here: Charles McPherson (center) at KSDS studios with Ron Dhanifu (left) and Matt Silver (right) ahead of Oct. 2024’s “Dizzy for President” concert, celebrating the 60th anniversary of Gillespie’s tongue-in-cheek run for POTUS.

By Matt Silver

Lots of consternation this week. Both bodies of congress have voted to rescind previously approved funding packages to public radio and television broadcasters. To be sure, the rescission package is politically motivated, a response to government funded news coverage and reporting that those behind this legislation would argue has been politically motivated for quite some time. Reasonable people can differ over how much merit, if any, that kind of critique contains when directed towards the newsgathering and reporting practices of NPR and PBS, the two public broadcasters with the broadest national reach. 

The unfortunate part is that that critique — and the subsequent legislative manifestation of that critique — has nothing to do with the dozens of independent public broadcasters that, like KSDS, don’t provide any political coverage of any kind.

By Matt Silver

You ever have a stretch of days where everything — every task, every responsibility, every obligation whether big or small — just feels way harder, way more fraught with obstacles and landmines than it ought to?

Hi there, Matt Silver of KSDS coming to you from our innovation labs here on the campus of San Diego City College with good news and bad. Here’s the bad: despite our best efforts, time travel remains only theoretically possible at this time. Decreased government funding of public media has all but guaranteed that our time machine development project won’t be ready for the next pledge drive. 

The good news is that here at KSDS, we’re mighty resourceful.

After surveying sporting houses of Storyville and the speakeasies of South Side Chicago, KSDS’s Jazz University returns with its most ambitious semester yet. Like Porgy, Bess, Sportin' Life, and George Gershwin before us, we’ve got our sights set on New York City, and KSDS GM and resident jazz historian Ken Poston is just the man to shepherd us all the way uptown without having to bear the expense of a monthly Metrocard.

Saxophonist, composer, and arranger Jack Montrose, pictured here in 1954. His arrangements would be recorded that year by ensembles led by Chet Baker and Clifford Brown. Photo by William Claxton.

By Matt Silver

A man with talent wants the world. Even if he’s too modest or mannered to announce it aloud, or to himself, there’s a part of him that sees one possible future where everything breaks his way. But what does such a man deserve? Maybe it’s fair, if harsh, to say that he doesn’t deserve anything. That no one deserves anything. But if you’ve some combination of natural talent, acquired skill, and the nerve to open yourself to the world’s judgment, all you can really ask for is a window of a few years to show what you’re capable of, come what may. 

By Matt Silver

By my rough count, this past week’s broadcast was the 50th distinct episode of Breaking Jazz to air here on KSDS. I hope you’ve found the programming to be fresh yet familiar, comfortable yet adventurous, clever yet heartfelt, athletic yet soulful. 

I hope you’ve encountered here virtuosity that’s more than just an intellectually stimulating exercise in sound. Virtuosity in service of tuneful music making. Music to help you better grasp for a moment’s peace or excitement or transcendence or whatever makes life awe-inspiring or worthwhile for you personally. 

Anyone who’s watched Seth McFarlane’s “Family Guy” knows his love for both the Sinatra and Great American Songbooks runs deep. It also comes as no surprise that such a brilliant voiceover artist is one heck of a singer!

By Matt Silver

With his new album, Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements, Seth McFarlane walks the musical roads Sinatra left untaken, singing a dozen charts that were originally written for the Chairman — by Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Don Costa — but never recorded. Anyone who's ever watched Family Guy knows of McFarlane's abiding love for and encyclopedic knowledge of 20th century music and culture, most particularly popular song and dance. But, for as much recognition as he receives for brilliance as a producer, actor, illustrator, comedian, and voice actor — all of which is deserved — McFarlane might also reasonably be called one of the most astute pop cultural historians and commentators of our time.

Don’t miss SING! SING! SING! THIS Saturday morning, June 28, at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET, when host Will Friedwald interviews the brilliant writer, actor, comedian, and vocalist Seth McFarlane.

Seth McFarlane, the brilliant writer, actor, illustrator, voiceover artist and comedic mind behind Family Guy, Ted, The Orville, and A Million Ways to Die in the West, also happens to be a wonderful vocal interpreter of American popular song.

Terence Blanchard has composed original music for over 80 motion pictures; for his efforts, he’s been nominated for two Academy Awards.

By Matt Silver

Versatility is one thing; possessing the aptitude to match a boundless musical curiosity is another. Leonard Bernstein had both; Terence Blanchard also has both. Bernstein’s jazz-infused compositions for stage and symphony orchestra bridged jazz and classical music in boundary-breaking new ways, lending credence to his senior thesis at Harvard, in which he asserted that “jazz is the universal basis of American composition.” Blanchard, in a career now in its fifth decade, has consistently expanded upon Bernstein’s thesis, riffing on classical motifs with his Grammy-winning jazz ensembles and enlivening operas, symphony orchestras, and scores upon scores of (film) scores by reminding audiences that jazz is not just an idiomatic musical language; it’s also, in the right hands, an unforgettably moving narrative tool.