Maurice Jay
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Maurice Jay (born February 6, 1968) is a Northern Irish composer, music producer, broadcaster and actor from Holywood, County Down. He is currently head of music at U105, part of the UTV group.
Educated at Sullivan Upper School in Holywood, he later gained a diploma in Sound Technology & Music Business from New York University, becoming a profesional 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. In the past he has worked as a music columnist for The Irish News, citing meeting Prince at his Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis as a highlight. His radio career started with community station BCR in the early ninties, 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. 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. In 2005 he joined UTV as Head Of Music for their new radio station U105, and 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, RTE's Let Me Entertain You and UTV's L8 & Live. He has also made numerous appearances as a talking head on news programmes and has undertaken voiceover work.
Jay appeared alongside James Nesbitt and Conleth Hill in West Side Story at the Grand Opera House Belfast, and starred as Riff, the leader of The Jets, in a later production of same musical with Opera Northern Ireland and the Ulster Orchestra.
