Maurice Jay
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Maurice Jay | |
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| Born | 1968 Holywood, Northern Ireland. |
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| Occupation | radio, television, music producer, actor |
Maurice Jay (born February 1968) is a Northern Irish radio and television broadcaster, music producer and actor from Holywood, County Down. He is currently Programme Director and Head Of Music at U105 Belfast, part of the UTV Media group.
Educated at Sullivan Upper School in Holywood, he later gained a diploma in Sound Technology & Music Business from New York University, becoming a professional sound engineer both in live and recorded sound, working at Jonathan Elias Associates Recording Studios in New York, Sonopista Studios in Almería, and as resident engineer at The Empire Music Hall, Belfast. His live work has included mixing sessions with artists such as the Grammy Award winning Amy Winehouse, former Marillion frontman Fish (singer), Brit Award nominee Nerina Pallot, and the multi-million album selling bands T'Pau and Hue & Cry to name but a few.
Previously Jay worked as a music columnist for The Irish News, citing meeting Prince at his Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis as a highlight. He was also the forntman of funk rock outfit The Behaviour, and albeit relatively short-lived, the band achieved national and international TV and radio exposure but never realised the potential of the sum of its parts. During his time running record label and artist management company Cherry Moon, Jay composed and produced albums for several artists and was instrumental in the creation of the Northern Ireland Music Industry Commission.
His radio career started with community station BCR in the early nineties, before moving to Downtown Radio to host their mid-morning and breakfast show slots. He then moved to Belfast CityBeat to take over the breakfast show and during his 4 year tenure, increased audience figures by 34% to record the stations largest audience for any show to date. Leaving there in 2005 to join UTV as Head Of Music for their new radio station U105, he also took up the position of Breakfast Show presenter in November 2006.
His TV appearances have included ITV Network show Flux, BBC2's Dance NRG, RTÉ's Let Me Entertain You and UTV's L8 & Live. He has also made numerous appearances as a talking head on news programmes and documentaries.
Jay played the lead role of Danny Zuko in a UK touring production of Grease and appeared alongside James Nesbitt and Conleth Hill in West Side Story. He also starred as Riff, the leader of The Jets, in a later production of same musical with Opera Northern Ireland and the Ulster Orchestra. He has appeared in over 100 performances of this Leonard Bernstein classic, and is due to tread the boards again in October at the Grand Opera House, Belfast.
