Jazz After Dark

Don Shor has been curating jazz selections for this show with the kind of quiet authority that comes from genuinely loving the music rather than performing expertise for an audience. Each biweekly episode runs about an hour and takes you through a carefully sequenced set of tracks, moving from boogie-woogie and ragtime roots through straight-ahead jazz, bossa nova, soul jazz, and beyond. The programming feels intentional -- tracks flow into each other in ways that create a real listening experience rather than just a shuffled playlist. The format is beautifully simple. Don introduces pieces with just enough context to orient you, then lets the music breathe. There's no over-analysis, no forced banter, and no commercial radio energy. It functions more like having a knowledgeable friend hand you a mixtape with brief notes scrawled on the sleeve. The show pulls from multiple decades and subgenres, so a single episode might move from a 1950s hard bop cut to something recorded last year, connected by mood or theme rather than chronology. With a 4.8-star rating from over 200 reviews, Jazz After Dark has built a loyal audience that treats it almost like a ritual -- something to put on after the day winds down. The public radio roots show in the production values and the unhurried pacing. If algorithm-driven streaming playlists leave you cold and you miss the feeling of a real DJ who knows what comes next, this is your show.