Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Jazz beats the virus online

Chicago presenters of jazz and new music, and journalists from Madrid to the Bay Area, vocalist Kurt Elling, trumpeter Orbert Davis and pianist Lafayette Gilchrist discussed how they’ve transcended coronavirus-restrictions on live performances with innovative methods to sustain their communities of musicians and listeners, as well as their own enterprises were in two Zoom panels I moderated last week .

The Show Goes On – Online on February 18 convened Chris Anderson of the Fulton Street Collective, trumpeter Davis of Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, vocalist extraordinaire Elling and his business partner Bryan Farina, Marguerite Horberg of HotHouse, Olivia Junell of Experimental Sound Studio and Steve Rashid of Studio 5 under the auspices of the Jazz Institute of Chicago. They’ve all produced live-streams, pitched to international as well as local audiences, achieving unprecedented results.

ESS started quickly last March with its Quarantine Concerts, and Fulton Street Collective’s Jazz Art Record Collective quickly followed suit; HotHouseGlobal has mounted five nights of music connecting Havana and Chicago musicians, among other far-reaching programs; Chicago Jazz Philharmonic engaged eager music students from the Cuban province Matanzas and launched and International Masters of Improvisation Workshop; Studio 5 conceptualized and has realized the very entertaining Into the Mist, an unique combination of website design and real-time, interactive Zoom play as a 90-minute immersive and interactive event, offered once a week (next on March 5);

Elling sang from his porch and the otherwise locked-down Green Mill, one of his performances from isolation reaching 180,000 listeners!

The Jazz Journalists Association (of which I’m president) followed up on Feb. 21 with Reviewing “Live” in the Age of Covid. Are these live-streams being reviewed? Do special techniques apply? Is there a market for such analysis? Is live-streaming changing jazz journalism, and here to stay?

This panel comprised freelance writers Jordannah Elizabeth (Baltimore-based), Paul de Barros (Seattle) and Andy Gilbert (Berkeley — both those latter two JJA board members); Seattle Times news editor/former features editor Melissa Davis; publicist Ann Braithwaite (of Boston-area Braithwaite & Katz Communications); Henry Wong, director of the Baltimore listening room An die Musik, which in past months has produced some 200 live-stream performances, and Gilchrist, who has live-streamed from An die Musik (video remains available for $5) as well as the Village Vanguard. Also speaking up were Spanish jazz journalist Mirian Arbalejo, MinnPost Artscape columnist Pamela Espeland, KNKX Jazz Northwest program host Jim Wilke and Amsterdam News writer Ron Scott, who said he felt it imperative to report more than ever on issues regarding social justice for Black Americans.

We learned that coverage of live-stream performances from mainstream media almost entirely consists of advance listings rather than reviews; that traditional print publications continue to grapple with declining revenues and content wells (there’s more news than can fit) besides digital platform challenges; that live-streams, unlike in-person performances, give reviewers the opportunity to re-watch but may also be judged on video production values; that individuals, professional or not, use social media to comment on live-streams in real time — and that news of the pandemic, social and political turmoil throughout 2020 have led many writers as well as musicians and indeed people in all professions to refocus, as best they can.

Panelists in these Zooms discussions were unfailingly candid and thoughtful (there may be something about staring at yourself in a grid with your peers that encourages best self-projection). No one indulged in whining about how life’s so different now that we’ve been victimized by Covid-19. Everyone was intent on people over profits, creating, producing, promoting and commenting seriously on musicians’ and venues’ online efforts in order to serve the art form in its many dimensions, most specifically addressing its local/global communities and constituents.

Almost a dozen presenters, more than half a dozen music journalists and media-purveyors, three musical artists (and special thanks to Lafayette for representing the concerns of many on the Show Zoom — view the JJA 2020 Awards Winners Live-Streaming party to hear others’ takes on the issues). They represent the grit, imagination, energetic devotion to their labors and the spirit fundamental to keeping not just jazz but all our arts alive today. Without exception they predict that hybrid models of presentation melding some sorts of live-streaming with some sorts of live, in-person shows (when those can resume), are the future. Hear them out! Or in the more urgent onscreen-version of radio/tv’s “Stay tuned” — Keep close watch!

JazzOnLockdown: Musicians, venues, .orgs — writers? — turn to live-streaming

It’s the most obvious, available and so far low-cost option for anyone who can cast a performance online for public consumption — jazz musicians specifically included: Live-streaming.

Fred Hersch has been first out of the box, committing to live-streaming daily mini concerts from his living room, 1pm Eastern Daily Time  (10am PST, 7pm in Europe) — https://www.facebook.com/fredherschmusic. 

As New York, California, Illinois and other U.S. locales request and/or require a suspension of public gatherings, the personal broadcast, whether of live-in-living room concerts, pre-produced video or even audio-only podcasts, can serve fans, maintain a presence and (it’s fervently hoped, perhaps, maybe maybe maybe) make some bit of money towards replacing what everyone will lose from in-person gigs. 

This being critical for jazz musicians, Jazz On The Tube — which serves 30,000 jazz-lovin’ subscribers to emails with embedded performance videos daily — has posted the best start-up live-streaming suggestions. It offers good information and valuable inks for players, teachers, producer-presenters, jazz support and service organizations and maybe even writers (how about I publicly Zoom with friendly/contentious colleagues, picking apart new releases)?

And perhaps most significantly, Jazz at Lincoln Center has started a blog where artists can post about their scheduled upcoming jazz live-streams, and listeners can find them.

A central calendar would be a boon to venues such as Baltimore’s An Die Musik, which broadcast what it promoted as it’s “first” live streaming event Friday, 3/20, of the Warren Wolf Quartet — charging viewers $5 to see it, and, if JALC is broadminded and inclusive, Experimental Sound Studio, a Chicago non-profit presenting contemporary composition and improvisation (Ken Vandermark is among their curators), which posted a schedule of “Quarantine Concerts,” but on 3/21 was flagged by YouTube for “inappropriate content,” so found a “friendlier platform,” switching to Twitch. Jazz on the Tube is eager to post links to upcoming jazz-streaming online, as is AllAboutJazz, now promoting live-stream events and offering to host uploads. But Jazz at Lincoln Center‘s “corona jazz livestreams” site could become the go-to platform, as it has announced plans to ramp up all its online content by digging into seven years of video’d concerts, panels and classes. Wynton Marsalis is also intending to sit for participatory online chats. 

Organizations such as New Music USA are telling members they’ll promote life-streamed events on their websites and feeds — a practice which seems like to grow, fast. Indeed, anyone who belongs to any such organization should look into what the organization’s plan is for online activity to be of general benefit. The JazzOnLockdown series of the Jazz Journalists Association, of which I’m president, is one such initiative, born out of the recently launched campaign “Working the Beat,” which all JJA members (and unaffiliated colleagues, too) are welcome to join.

But since most jazz musicians (and jazz journalists) are self-employed freelancers, it’s probably essential to rely on ourselves and do it ourselves.. Adapting or heightening one’s media game may seem tiresome if not daunting, but in reality it’s no longer so time intensive and difficult. It’s a matter of experimenting, improvising, taking your time and trying again until you’ve got enough of a grasp on the array of current cheap and accessible tools that connect us online to be able to jam for and with your correspondents (friends/family/fans/international audience). Trying these new methods can be fun. Still, we all hope they won’t be so singularly necessary — the only space to convene, assuredly safe from a virus — for very long.

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