Jazz educators go south

As reported by my friend Paul de Barros, jazz critic of the Seattle Times, the annual IAJE conference, which over the past decade has served as an unrivaled meeting ground for jazz-oriented musicians, students, educators, academic institutions, instrument manufacturers, record companies, festival producers, music and book publishers, print journalists, broadcasters and bloggers will not take place as planned in Seattle in January 2009, will not publish its quarterly journal or follow up on current programs  - - in fact will disband entirely, leaving some 8,000 members without platform or representation in a world increasingly marginalizing its mission.

"A bunch of jazz musicians formed this organization and it grew into a multimillion-dollar operation with a huge convention and a big staff and big journal, but it was still run by a volunteer board elected by the membership that met twice a year."

Don't blame the musicians -- IAJE ex-executive director Bill McFarlin and his board were jazz teachers and administrators, not creators. American jazz musicians long ago learned to work cheap and act wily; no musician-run organization (like the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians or even the American Federation of Musicians) has ever racked up a million-dollar deficit from its operations. Such a group would be both unlikely to bite off so much more than they could chew and unable to convince anyone to extend them such credit anyway. No, I think to know how the IAJE debacle happened, we ought to press its suits.