David Ward 

david.ward@ckua.com



My life has always involved music. I earned my musical education with countless hours spent by the radio and countless trips to the library to borrow records and books about music. I spun records at the junior-high sock hops and followed the music scene in fanzines. Who knew that this childhood obsession would turn into a job at a radio station, let alone THE radio station?

One fateful afternoon, I chanced upon 580 AM, and the world was never the same. I was transfixed by the blues, dazzled by the jazz and challenged by the postmodern classical music. CKUA led me into the depth and breadth of human musical expression. The announcers in the mid-1970s were incredible, and their on-air musical journeys were spectacular.

So it was exhilarating to get the call to work at CKUA in 1982, host programs like By Request, Time for Jazz and Music for a Sunday Afternoon, and sub for my colleagues on just about every CKUA show. For 15 years, I oversaw the development of our famous library, now home to more than 125,000 CDs, LPs, 78s, 45s, tapes, transcription discs, books and magazines.

CKUA announcers have a lot of freedom to bring a very individual approach to our listeners: like a painter, we bring our own palettes and colours to dab on the broader canvas in a beautiful, interesting and friendly way.

In other musical journeys, I played saxophones in a rock 'n' roll band and learned to play other woodwinds, guitars, basses and the piano. I studied music formally in Edmonton and Victoria, where I found my singing voice. I’ve worked with the Richard Eaton Singers, the University of Alberta Concert Choir and the Edmonton bluegrass band, Lonesome And Then Some.

These days, my motto comes from a New Yorker cartoon: “I don’t sing because I’m happy, I’m happy because I sing.”