John Kelly presents The View on RTE Television and he also presents The JK Ensemble on RTE Lyric FM. After a degree in law at Queen's University John joined the BBC and went on to win two EMA awards and the prestigious Sony Award for his various music/arts/documentary radio and television programmes with the BBC, UTV and Channel 4.
After twelve long years of all that, he moved to Dublin to present the groundbreaking Eclectic Ballroom on what was then called Radio Ireland.
He then crossed town to RTE to present Mystery Train where he won the PPI Award for Music Broadcaster of the Year for 2002.
In 2006, he moved to RTE lyric Fm to present The JK Ensemble."An extraordinary programme" said Bono, "To go from Duke Ellington to Bjork. To go from Woody Guthrie to The Virgin Prunes. It's an amazing thing to pull off.
There's nothing like it anywhere in the world."Other duties have seen John him write a column for the Irish Times (he still contributes occasionally as time permits), narrate U2's Missing Sarajevo DVD documentary, film his own documentary on Elvis Presley in Tennessee and Mississippi and travel further throughout the United States with the RTE travel programme No Frontiers.
Other musical adventures have taken him to Senegal, Estonia and China.Over the years John has interviewed many leading figures in the music and arts world:
- Van Morrison,
- Lou Reed
- David Bowie
- Seamus Heaney
- Nina Simone
- Brian Eno
- Al Green
- Steve Reich
- John McGahern
- Solomon Burke
- George Martin
- Sam Phillips
- U2, Brian Wilson
- Elvis Costello
- Emmylou Harris
- Yoko Ono
- Rory Gallagher
- BB King
- John Berger
- Herbie Hancock
- Townes Van Zandt
- Daniel Lanois
- Mose Allison
- Philip Glass
- Screaming Jay Hawkins
- Jimmy Scott
- Philip Lynott
- Randy Newman and many more.
Describing himself as "half a musician but not quite" he has played his harmonica on stage with Van Morrison, Tom Robinson, Paul Brady and Gavin Friday. He also co-wrote half a dozen songs on Paul Brady's last album Say What You Feel.
John has also written two novels both published by Jonathan Cape - The Little Hammer and Sophisticated Boom Boom - a book about music - published in 2003. In the past John has also presented RTE Television music series Other Voices.
