49 Minutes of Jazz
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49 Minutes of Jazz (49 минут джаза) is Radio Liberty musical review by Dmitri Savitski (aka DS) from 1989 to 2004. Constant theme song of the program is So Tired by Bobby Timmons.
The program started in 1989 originally dubbed "49 and a half minutes of jazz" ("49 с половиной минут джаза"), later it was split by the advertisement, which swallowed those 30 seconds.
— How did 49 minutes of jazz began?
— I was at Horace Silver's at Malibu, California, interviewing him for Le Mond de la Musique, when I got an insight to make a radio program about jazz from this interview and then to propose it to Liberty. The idea was warmly accepted by Liberty producer Ruslan Geliskhanov, he invited me to Munich and we made a pilot-set.[1]
Cancelled
The program was cancelled on April 10, 2004 due to "the change of Liberty's format". In those 15 years DS had made 693 issues, 49 minutes each (which amounts to 33 957 minutes in total). He had interviewed Ahmad Jamal, Benny Golson, Jimmy "Jammin'" Smith, Wynton Marsalis and other jazz stars.
Mario Corti (ex-director of Radio Liberty’s Russian Service): One of the reasons given for my removal was that I “resisted changes”. After my removal, the RFE/RL management put their own people in management positions in the Russian Service to carry out their plans. They shut down many cultural programs, including the brilliant and popular broadcasts by Sergei Iourienen. They also shut down serious analytical programs, “Commentators at a Roundtable,” as well as Paramonov’s show (which they later reinstated), shut down Savitsky’s popular program on jazz (recently reinstated). They changed the format of other shows, expanded the number of talk shows, and so on.[2]
Resumed
The program resumed on 1 April 2008 now dubbed 9 minutes of jazz. Since 7 May. 2008 had been expanded to 14 minutes dubbed "Jazz at 'Libery'" (Джаз на "Свободе"). On 1 March 2009 it is renamed to "Jazz time" (Время джаза) and is almost reverted to its original format, taking now 48 minutes.