Tina Edwards is a music multi-hyphenate, recognised as an international DJ, broadcaster, curator and music journalist.

Championing new music is what makes Tina’s heart race. On the radio, she’s premiered tracks and interviewed both huge names and rising artists on Worldwide FM, BBC Radio 3, Soho Radio, Tokyo’s J-Wave, Bandcamp Weekly and much more. In 2024, she’ll be fronting a brand new podcast series. She also shares recommendations with a community of 180k music lovers on Instagram.

Given her degree in Music Journalism, Tina expresses her love for music with the pen, too. She’s Editor for Listen Zine, which she works on with the creative team at high-end speaker brand KEF. Each issue is genre-less and focused on a different global scene, enabling Tina to take readers on a journey through her eclectic recommendations. She’s also written for Downbeat, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Monocle, Composer, Mixmag and many more music and culture publications.

Beginning to DJ just before the pandemic landed, Tina’s name has been rising steadily on International line-ups, now sitting alongside some of the artists that she’s been supporting. Her penchant for eclecticism, with jazz and club culture at the core, have seen her share line-ups with Coco Maria, Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, Toy Tonics, LeftO, Gilles Peterson, and many more. In 2024, she warmed up for Ron Trent on We Out Here’s main stage. She’s performed at festivals such as North Sea Jazz, Lost Village, XJazz Berlin, Wilderness and Camp Bestival amongst others.

Come to her bi-annual Jazz dancefloor parties Love Is Everywhere at GROW Hackney, and you’ll find a following of dedicated dancers that come to hear Tina play jazz, samba, latin, house and more from her rotating selection of records.

Tina’s been curating both live and DJ line-ups for several years, and has been of the most vocal cheerleaders for UK Jazz that you could find; she booked the likes of Sons of Kemet, Yussef Kamaal, KOKOROKO, Nubya Garcia all early on in their journeys, for shows as varied as SXSW, The Great Escape and various UK residencies. Not to mention CHICAGOxLONDON; an ambitious project that she curated with her successful multimedia blog EZH (2014-2018) with label International Anthem. It brought together the biggest names in UK and Chicago Jazz, forging music relationships which are strong today.

It’s all of this that led her to presenting BBC One TV documentary Jazz UK: Spitting Fire. Check out the accompanying playlist with thousands of followers.

Today, Tina is curating events and making playlists alongside Tim Garcia under re:sonate, and co-running Queer Jazz, a platform that spotlights LGBTQIA+ jazz artists which is supported by Arts Council England

. She’s a DJ in demand Internationally, with a busy Summer of festivals ahead. She broadcasts monthly on Soho Radio and is in production for the sixth series of her British Airways new music series, Next Big Thing; it’s listened to my millions of passengers every year. Check out the adjoining playlist on Spotify.

Tina is also a vocal cheerleader for neurodiverse people in the music industry, and is sitting on a book proposal about the relationship between Jazz and ADHD which she’s yet to pitch.

“Essential jazz into dance selections every time - Gilles Peterson

“Expert crate-digging and impeccable mixing intuition… a style defined by a bridging of jazz and club culture” She Said So

“YOU ABSOLUTELY SMASHED IT… THE GEM OF THE FESTIVAL FOR US” LOST VILLAGE DANCER

AUTUMN/WINTER 24

19 October - Montreux Jazz, Montreux

9 November - Apricot Ballroom, Sheffield

15 November - Queer Jazz with Emma Volard & afromerm (hosting) - The Vortex, London

21 November - Balance The Mix - W Hotel, London

23 November - Love is Everywhere w/ Jazzy Sport, London

30 November - Love Is Everywhere w/Brakery - Old Market Assembly, Bristol

7 December - Objkkt Record Bar, Seoul

12 December - Abbey Road Studios Christmas Party, London (private)

20 December - Amy Winehouse Band, KOKO, London

21 December - Lift Your Feet, York

31 January - Absolutely Everything, 100 Club - London

6 February - re:sonate at Ellen’s, House of KOKO

MUSIC JOURNALISM

I’m a Music Journalist specialing in Jazz, club culture and underground music. I’ve written for Composer, Monocle, WeJazz, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Mixmag, Downbeat, Selamta (Ethiopian Airlines), Carlyle and Co (Hong Kong) and more.

I’m Editor of Listen Zine presented by high audio speaker brand KEF. It’s a printed zine that zooms into the underground music scene of a particular city, with Issue 1 focusing on Amsterdam, and Issue 2 on Tokyo. Issue 3 on London comes later in 2024, The zines are distributed across the world with an adjoining event in the featured city. I’m incredibly proud of it.

You can read my monthly column Slow Listening on KEF’s sister website, Sound of Life.

Contact me with commissions.

THE UNMATCHED SOUND WORLD OF NAI PALM

LISTEN ZINE / SOUND OF LIFE

Nai Palm’s home is as quirkily ornate as you might imagine. We sit in her lounge laden with red walls—not the muse of her band Hiatus Kaiyote’s Red Room track though; she moved in only recently. Synthetic white flowers hang from the entire span of the ceiling. To my right, a framed bat skeleton catches my eye—a gift from a friend who said “watch this” as Nai had no interest in watching TV whilst she recovered from illness a few years ago.

JACOB COLLIER’S TECHNICOLOUR WORLD

DOWNBEAT (COVER STORY)

Jacob Collier started to build his fanbase back in 2011 when he began sharing intoxicating arrangements to popular songs on YouTube. One of those fans was Quincy Jones, who in 2015 flew to Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London to watch Collier’s solo show. Jones began managing him soon afterward. The rest, as they say, is history … but not quite. Just turning 30 — with five studio albums and four world tours under his technicolored belt — the multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger and educator is just getting started.

MEET RUSH HOUR’S ANTAL

TAKEN FROM ISSUE 1 OF LISTEN ZINE, KEF

You have DJs—and then you have DJs who bring together worldwide communities. For Antal Heitlager, the medium and symbol for communion is Rush Hour.

Celebrating the life of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou

selamta magazine, ethiopian arlines

In March 2023, we lost an exceptional woman: musician and nun, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, who would have turned 100 years old in December 2023. Her life tells a story that is as moving and as eventful as any film.

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross on emotively scoring 'Bones and All'

COMPOSER MAGAZINE

When Composer asked if I would interview living legends Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, I had to exercise restraint, not to WhatsApp the school friends that I’m no longer in touch with - the ones that I listened to Nine Inch Nails with as a teenager, whilst we drank on the beach and watched the sun reach towards the sand.