BROADCASTING
More than three decades in broadcasting - as presenter, interviewer, musician and programme maker - exploring jazz, popular song and the people who created the music.
BBC Radio 2
Leo joined Jazz FM for the station’s 2008 relaunch and has remained closely associated with the station across its modern era.
Today he writes, programmes and presents The Leo Green Show, his two-hour Sunday evening programme devoted to jazz, swing, the Great American Songbook - combining both classic and contemporary recordings, with the stories of the performers, composers, lyricists and recordings that shaped the music.
Alongside the weekly show, Leo has created and presented specialist programming including In Love with Motown, programmes marking the centenaries of Oscar Peterson, Zoot Sims, B.B. King and Mel Tormé, and programming devoted to Van Morrison.
As both broadcaster and working musician, Leo approaches the music from the inside: exploring not simply the recordings themselves, but how they were made, who made them and why they continue to matter.
LG Radio
Leo Green has enjoyed a long association with BBC Radio 2, scripting and presenting more than 250 hours of programmes for the network.
His work has ranged from regular series to documentaries, interviews and major live broadcasts, with programmes, exploring jazz, popular song, rock ’n’ roll, soul, country and The Great American Songbook. Principal series include Sounds of the 50s with Leo Green, The Green Room and Leo Green’s Great American Songbook.
His documentaries and specials have explored the work and lives of Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Van Morrison, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin, Sammy Cahn, Harry Warren, Roy Orbison, Ella Fitzgerald and Ervin Drake. He has also presented major live orchestral broadcasts for the network, including editions of Friday Night Is Music Night and famously recreated the final, un-broadcast radio script left by his father, broadcaster and writer Benny Green.
Alongside his work for established broadcasters, Leo created LG Radio as a home for independently produced, authored music programming — allowing individual artists, recordings and musical subjects to be explored at considerably greater length.
Its catalogue spans documentary, biography, interview, live performance, jazz, soul, Motown, popular song and cinema, across more than a dozen distinct programme strands.
In A Lifetime uses multi-part documentary series to examine an artist through their life and recordings, with substantial series devoted to Elton John, Dusty Springfield and Aretha Franklin. Other strands examine defining recordings, reinterpretations of the great songs, historic live performances and the relationship between music and cinema.
Programme strands include: In A Lifetime - Insight - Inspired - In Concert - In The Dark - In The Mood - In The Groove - In The 50s - In Love With Motown - In Conversation.
In Conversation has featured extended interviews with Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, Van Morrison and Robert Lindsay.
Jazz FM
