Today we’re tak­ing a trip back to the hey­day of the big bands in the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, fea­tur­ing a wide range of Big Band jazz and swing.

The pro­gramme includes a mix­ture of orig­i­nal peri­od record­ings and more recent material.

You can also hear episodes of Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton every four hours from 12:00 UTC

And tune in today at 12 noon or 4pm Pacif­ic (20:00 or 00:00 UTC) for the lat­est episode of Where’ve You Been?, where we look at places and events across the Sec­ond Life grid (see sep­a­rate entry).

“trom­bones, big bang big band @ por­gy & bess club, vien­na, aus­tria” by franzj is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Some orig­i­nal peri­od record­ings may con­tain neg­a­tive stereo­types or lan­guage now regard­ed as offen­sive. Such mate­ri­als should be seen in the con­text of the time peri­od and as a reflec­tion of atti­tudes of the time. The record­ings are part of the his­tor­i­cal record, and do not rep­re­sent the views of Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio.