The large spectrum of private radio stations in Sofia has been recently enriched by one more. For over 20 days now, jazz music has been filling the airwaves 24 hours a day at 104 MHz, Jazz FM.

The first specialized radio station for jazz music was launched on the Day of Sofia, September 17, with a big concert in Hall 1 of the National Palace of Culture. For the first time ever, prominent jazz musicians gathered and performed on the same stage. Teodosi Spasov, Angel Zaberski Jr, Stoyan Yankulov, as well as actors Maya Novoselska and Samuel Fintsi were only a small fraction of the performers. Popular Bulgarian jazzman Milcho Leviev, who lives and composes his music in the U.S., was supposed to be the godfather of the radio, but because of the events in the U.S. he could not fly over to attend the launching concert.

Jazz FM is the second project of the CJ Company, which first started Classic FM almost seven years ago. Its target audience is young people between 25 and 35 who are students or have graduated and have made a professional start in life. "This audience, however, will definitely grow larger because traditional jazz has its fond admirers who are mostly from the older generation," explained Dimitar Evstatiev, the station's program director. "On the other hand, we broadcast many jazz covers of popular rock and pop songs and maybe will attract people from the younger generation."

According to Evstatiev, jazz is not something scary, over-complicated and elitist, and there is something for everybody. Evstatiev himself has been a great fan of jazz for many years and was previously program director of Tangra Radio and Classic FM. "Jazz is my great love and I have also dreamed to have more jazz shows on the air because there is a large audience here that deserves them. In my view, most educated and intelligent people are jazz fans to some extent," he said, adding that jazz was after all a very relative term since it has been developing for almost 100 years now and has evolved into a great number of styles and trends.

Jazz FM has acquired radio frequencies for broadcasting in seven cities - Sofia, Varna, Bourgas, Rousse, Plovdiv, Stara Zagora and Blagoevgrad. Currently, they broadcast only in Sofia, but their goal is to cover all other towns as soon as possible. "After all, we do not want to discriminate in any way against jazz fans outside Sofia," Evstatiev said with a smile.

The Jazz FM radio station has the ambition to be unique on the market in Bulgaria because of three main characteristics. With its slogan "Music Does Matter" the radio gives the biggest importance to music and in this it is different from other radio stations. "Some pieces can be heard on other stations as well but the majority of our music is unique and can be heard only on our radio station," Evstatiev said. He himself has a large collection of jazz music which is now part of the radio's music fund.

"Our second distinction is the different way of hosting radio shows. Since the music is a bit more serious and intelligent we would like the way of hosting to also be a bit more intelligent, at a higher level," he explained. He pointed out that they wanted their hosts to create a feeling of a serious attitude towards the music and a respect towards the listener.

The third thing which differentiates the new radio station from others is that its program does not consist of the sort of trivial blocks, which tend to make up the programs of other stations. "I think listeners have also gotten sick of this way of programming, they prefer to listen to music all the time."

The only voices who will be heard on the air of Jazz FM will be those of the hosts of special shows, such as Latin influence in jazz or ethnic jazz, the so-called World Music. These will be educational and informative shows above all.

As the only radio station in Bulgaria which broadcasts solely jazz music, the people from Jazz FM plan to try to help Bulgarian jazz musicians. "They are a kind of hero," Evstatiev noted. "At the moment there are no conditions for development of jazz music here and many of their colleagues have already left the country."

The radio will promote every new jazz album of Bulgarian musicians that appears on the market. It will also help young musicians produce their albums. Another idea of the Jazz FM team is to take advantage of the fact that they occupy the last floor of the building of the Music Theatre, on the ground floor of which the Backstage club is situated. They have the ambition to air live jazz performances from the club.

"We want to continually surprise our listeners with new ideas so that they become accustomed to expect something new each time," Evstatiev said.