Jazz 88.3 KSDS FM San Diego

10/06/2025

How does he do it?! He does it ALL, and does it all really, really well. The prolific Will Friedwald, ladies and gentlemen. Catch him in the The Wall Street Journal, The New York Sun, on our airwaves, on Substack ("Slouching Toward Birdland"), OR in the flesh at Birdland Jazz Club, where he's most certainly not the door man, but perhaps there enough to be mistaken for him!

Talk about having a bona fide slugger in the middle of your batting order...Wonderful post below from W.F. on our recent pledge drive and its theme, the relationship between jazz and baseball. And check out the archived recordings of recent Sing Sing Sing broadcasts at the bottom of the page! Thanks for being such a wonderful partner, Will! We can't wait to rock the inaugural "Sing Sing Sing" tee shirt around town!

Alerting You to the KSDS Jazz Radio 88.3 Fall Pledge Drive: "Jazz and Baseball"

10/04/2025

Here's the coolest thing I've seen today:

Here's the coolest thing I've seen today:

Behold, the intro to the video game MLB The Show '23. Produced and performed by San Diego's own (multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Archie Thompson), alongside a band of San Diego musicians, it features a voiceover of then-Marlins infielder Jazz Chisholm (now of the New York Yankees) talking about the some the historic connections between jazz and baseball we've been talking about the entire drive...

Let's just say, and co. knock it out of the park.

The opening intro for MLB The Show 23Platform: PS5MLB The Show 23 IntroMLB The Show 23 Opening IntroMLB The Show 23MLB The Sho...

10/03/2025

Bull Durham is the perfect baseball movie for jazz lovers, writes KSDS's Matt Silver, because it celebrates in baseball what discerning jazz fans love most about jazz: the space between the notes.

For KSDS’s Matt Silver, Ron Shelton’s “Bull Durham” is a perfect game. By Matt Silver “Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls — it’s more democratic.” That’s the gospel as served from Ke...

10/02/2025

In honor of KSDS's Fall Membership Classic celebrating jazz and baseball, KSDS's Matt Silver writes on the historic "special relationship" between jazz and baseball. Ways of life, to be sure, but Silver suggests that these two American pastimes offer aspirational blueprints for ways of living.

By Matt Silver "I see great things in baseball. It's our game — the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us." -Walt Whitman...

09/29/2025

The Brothers from Other Mothers back at it again today from 2 to 5 pm.

619-388-3000 to pledge support for continued jazz and blues programming.

And because no one asked for it in the first place, a republishing of Matt Silver's poem dedicated to his buddy Ron.

Silver and Dhanifu: A curious pair
One, a broadcasting legend
The other, pedantic...And, for now, with hair

Our very close friendship
May confuse more than some
Because ours is a time
Where the discourse is dumb

But genuine friendship....
Like Bird, it's alive!
Even if I could speak it,
This wouldn't be jive.

At this strange and magical place
That efforts too hard to survive
This wandering Jew's best pal
Is the brother from Compton..On every day, from 2 to 5

If you love jazz and blues, hit us up: 619-388-3000. If you love independent public media, hit us up: 619-388-3000. If the unlikeliest of bromances are your favorite kind, hit us up: 619-388-3000.

09/24/2025

During the 1984 NLCS, Don Drysdale triumphantly assured Padres fans: THERE WILL BE TOMORROW! Let's make sure that still holds true, for the Friars and for another beloved San Diego institution: KSDS, San Diego's Jazz 88.3.

Our Fall Classic begins this coming Friday. Just in time for Padres playoff season, we'll be celebrating the special relationship between jazz and baseball. Let's make sure Drysdale's historic words still ring true 41 years later. Together, let's make sure there will be a tomorrow and many more to follow for America's finest jazz and blues in America's Finest City.

Our Fall 2025 Membership Drive begins this Friday, Sept. 26. Our theme is Jazz & Baseball. Twin pillars of classic American culture, both quintessential representations of democracy in action and the twin engines of individual creative expression and teamwork. For KSDS, San Diego’s Jazz 88.3 — b...

09/24/2025

Our Fall 2025 Membership Drive begins this Friday, Sept. 26. Our theme is Jazz & Baseball. Twin pillars of classic American culture, both quintessential representations of democracy in action and the twin engines of individual creative expression and teamwork.

For KSDS, San Diego’s Jazz 88.3 — but also for our culture, more broadly — now’s the time for teamwork. With so much talk lately about “what we want our country to be,” we think jazz and baseball embody the manifestation of some of our most virtuous impulses, traditions, and innovations. We’ll have more on the historic relationship between jazz and baseball in the coming days and all throughout this fall campaign, which promises to be a LOOOONG Drive (like the thousands memorably called by golden voices like Jerry Coleman an Vin Scully and Mel Allen and Harry Kalas and Harry Carey and Ernie Harwell, and so many more).

Like baseball, we believe so strongly and so passionately that jazz and blues are woven deep into the fabric of who we are. The values championed by this music make this unprecedented multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-lingual experiment called the USA so much more likely to succeed…if we can keep them.

Before we go full throttle with the jazz and baseball theme, read Matt Silver’s case for supporting jazz in a crowded field of worthy causes.

By Matt Silver For legions of people of all worldviews, sensibilities, and persuasions, the world feels like a chaotic mess. Despite this – or, more likely, because of it – people seem hungrier than ever for meaning, connection, community. One of the ways this manifests is giving. Giving is vi.....

09/24/2025

Today (now yesterday, otherwise John Coltrane as Sept. 23) would have been John Coltrane's 99th birthday. It's impossible to overstate Trane's impact or the staggering scope of his legacy. His music will never, ever go stale or feel antiquated. It's hard to articulate how incredible that is.

Next year will be Trane's centennial, and you better believe we'll pull out all the stops for that. In the meantime, we invite you to revisit the really in-depth Coltrane retrospective we put together in Feb. 2024 as a supplement to that year's Black History Month programming. Trane lives!

This February, KSDS Jazz 88.3 FM San Diego celebrates Black History Month by honoring the Coltrane Legacy.

09/21/2025

Sad news. We're mourning the loss of the great jazz pianist Mike Wofford at 87.
If you know jazz and San Diego jazz, you know Wofford. He was one of ours — raised here, shaped by the scene here, and he never stopped giving back to it. Before all the gigs with Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, before the studio work and accolades, he was cutting his teeth with another musician from San Diego, Howard Rumsey and the Lighthouse All-Stars, right in the thick of the West Coast jazz movement.
Mike Wofford had that rare mix: deep swing, total class, and a touch on the piano that could hush a room. He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t need to be. He listened, he supported, and when it was time to speak, musically, he always had something true to say.

A huge loss for jazz, and for San Diego. Our condolences go out to Mike's wife, Holly Hofmann, the Wofford family and all those who knew him and saw him play. Rest easy, Mike.

09/08/2025

Was a real treat to have pianist and composer Erik Deutsch on "Breaking Jazz" last night. A very talented dude, and interesting to boot. His main gig is touring the world with rock and roll legends The Black Crowes. In his spare time, he's managed to release nine heavily jazz-influenced albums as a leader. His latest such offering, "This Was Then," is a great example of thoughtfully blending a lifetime's worth of musical influences into an album without making any one part of it overwrought. Which becomes easier to do when you've got a great band behind you in the form of Jeff Hill Bass, Tony Mason Music, Avi Bortnick, Brian Drye and Mike McGinnis.

Catch last night's show on-demand at https://www.jazz88.org/programs/Breaking_Jazz/

Erik's segment begins at the 30:55 mark