Sunday night's survey of modern mainstream jazz, Jazz Ballads & Blues, spotlights great instrumentalists like Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Milt Jackson, Grant Green, John Coltrane, and Horace Silver, and great vocalists like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Chris Connor, Kurt Elling, Diana Krall, and the Four Freshmen. Every week, those great artists, and many more, including jazz's newest stars, play and sing everything from jazz classics and Broadway and Tin Pan Alley ballads to modern pop and rock tunes to the basic twelve bar blues. The emphasis of Jazz Ballads & Blues is on swing, lyricism, and melody. The songs played are those that you’ve enjoyed all your life, and the jazz versions of those songs are highly accessible and enjoyable yet hip, smart, and sophisticated, and, almost always, tinged with the blues.

Al began hosting Jazz Ballads & Blues in June of 2006 after the original host of 32 years, and good friend, Joe DiGiorgio, died. The show is modeled on what Al heard and the resulting feeling he got when listening to Joe’s jazz shows.