Eamonn Lenihan is a freelance radio broadcaster and producer. He looks forward to returning to the medium during the second half of 2023. In the meantime, you can listen back to 650 of his broadcasts, presented live between 2012 and 2015, by visiting the Episodes section of the official RTÉ website.

Watch out for late starts some nights (concert overruns)! If the first track on the playlist shows a time of, say, 22:12, then toggle twelve minutes in to hear the beginning of the show...

For fourteen continuous years, Eamonn presented specialist music programmes every weekend on RTÉ lyric fm, Ireland's state-run arts and classical music station. He hosted "The Third Wave", "After Hours" and "Jazz Alley" between 2002 and 2008. This period marked the beginning of important associations and collaborations between RTÉ and domestic jazz musicians, societies, festivals, venues and promoters.

Contemporary European jazz was aired every Friday night on "The Third Wave". Regular features included concert highlights from around the world (including Ireland); the occasional paid studio session — recorded at RTÉ Donnybrook, for exclusive broadcast; a weekly gig guide; and the odd outside broadcast direct from the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival. Performers, arrangers, critics and educators — Wynton Marsalis, Dan Morgenstern and Julian Joseph, among them — were invited to choose their favourite recordings and/or discuss aspects of their careers. Several Irish musicians acted as guest presenters; all had interesting stories to tell.

On Saturdays, "100 Jazz Essentials" introduced listeners to albums predominantly recorded in the US by artists like Art Tatum and Brad Mehldau, Sonny Rollins and Bobby Watson, Louis Armstrong and Don Ellis, Billie Holiday and Jack Teagarden, Art Blakey and Paul Motian, Charles Mingus and Ray Brown, Duke Ellington and Gary McFarland, etc.

"After Hours" featured nu-jazz, electronica, soul-jazz and jazz-rock fusion, along with recent European concerts and archived content from The Newport Jazz Festival.

Between 2009 and 2015, Eamonn hosted over 1,000 editions of "The Blue Of The Night". Much of the music aired - whether singer-songwriter, folk, ambient, neo-classical, jazz or chamber music - came from his own personal CD collection. Many of these shows have become available again on RTÉ, via listen back - visit here.

Showreel samples are available to broadcasting media staff on request.
Please direct your query through the FEEDBACK page to obtain online access.