Collage from NEA Arts.gov
Last night’s NEA Jazz Masters concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center was ustreamed — for the first time allowing the world to see live, free and forever America’s official ceremony knighting the duly experienced, accomplished and original wise-people who create and perpetuate America’s living vernacular music.Â
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It was great to actually be there, too –Â amid a throng of jazz’s most powerful public and private supporters — beside those who make the music, those who present, teach, promote, record, fund, think, write, broadcast, book, manage and counsel it. The jazz “community” (not much more an “industry”) may be commercially embattled, but an unofficial and amorphous coalition of jazz activists has nonetheless succeed in lifting the art form to world-wide adoption and status undreamed of one or two generations ago.Â
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The mood of celebration was so heady that NEA chairman Rocco Landesman’s announcement of $250,000 in grants for 15 non-profits to support live performance nationwide was almost overlooked.