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Chuck Leavens

Jazz Host on WZUM and President/CEO of Pittsburgh Public Media

About Me

Chuck Leavens Host WZUM Jazz Chuck has been an air personality since 1970 with an on-air presence in many markets and been heard nationally for many years as the voice of many commercial products. His love of music knows no bounds with experience in many music formats as his love of music is wide open to the sounds of life. He has known many artists and grew up with a few and to this day appreciates and promotes this music to a new generation of people seeking this special sounds of the mind heart and spirit.

Chuck comes to The Pittsburgh Jazz Channel and WZUM from WDUQ. He was the voice of WDUQ and was a familiar on air voice there since 1989. He is the founder of PubMusic and The Pittsburgh Jazz Channel, founded WZUM and maintains the music and systems to bring this timeless music to you.

Chuck is the 2008 recipient of the Engineering Achievement Award from the Association of Public Radio Engineers (APRE)

Chuck is also known as a recording engineer documenting much of Pittsburgh's incredible jazz heritage. Chuck is well known as a voice over artist as well voicing hundreds of commercials, local and national, over the years.

Chuck is also a musician, writer and poet, playing in various groups over the years. He resides in the South Hills of Pittsburgh with his wife and children and cats.

Contact Me

My Jazz Story

My mother was a singer. She instilled in me a sense of swing and timing. Everywhere I went there was that sound, that happy sound of life on fire. Our next door neighbors were jazz musicians. Traveling in a hearse to jobs with the bass strapped on top and a set of vibes in the back. It was the early 60's. I would watch and listen and they would have be singing "Days of Wine and Roses" at age 7 with them. It was fun. It felt good. It felt right. Pop music called to me growing up. I found myself drawn to the more technical types of sounds, ones influenced by the higher levels of jazz, songs of feeling, songs of spirit, songs of the best of humanity. Throughout many radio adventures I ended up landing with jazz. I don't think it was an accident. I don't believe in jazz as a museum piece. I believe it is a living, breathing, ever evolving art form of people reaching out in the darkness, searching for the exact chords for the exact nature of human existence.

My House Concert Story

Some of my favorite shows have been when the mind/spirit/emotional connections were so deep that it took me away, like a good film, to a different place. Listening to a piece and being so tightly enraptured by it that as the piece ends you find it hard to breathe, hard to speak, just left in a stunned state. Seeing that happen to others is a shared experience of some of the higher levels of the human spirit. I have experienced both.

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