![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/download-1.jpg\")
We ate barbecue at a well-attended Jazz Standard performance by drummer Dafnis Prieto’s sextet<\/a>, and the next day I went to a celebration of Ornette Coleman’s birthday, his demise five years ago and his ongoing spirit, hosted by his son Denardo at the Coleman’s midtown loft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Noted improvisers David Murray, Graham Haynes, Craig Harris, Kenny Wessel and a gang from Philadelphia including Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Charlie Ellerbee and Bobby Zankel were there, bumping elbows instead of shaking hands or hugging, because of what we’d heard about Covad-19. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Afterwards, Denardo called it “the last great party on earth.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the event we were all a little nervous but still together. Within five weeks one guest, 84-year-old bassist Henry Grimes, had succumbed to complications brought on by the disease exacerbating previous conditions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By then — mid-April — with the world-wide coronavirus pandemic sweeping through jazz and every other U.S. performing arts sphere as an ill wind, musicians and jazz support organizations had hastened to batten down the hatches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Jazz Standard, like all other clubs across the country, was closed; concerts, tours and soon summer festivals were cancelled; record release promotions were scrubbed or postponed. That’s pretty much how it’s remained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some individuals \u00e2\u20ac\u201c pianist Fred Hersch being a leader among them, having begun in late March to perform a “Tune of the Day<\/a>” solo, free-of-charge on Facebook \u00e2\u20ac\u201c quickly turned to live streaming from their homes or studios, with tip jars or donate buttons pinned to their platforms’ pages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Catching on, ambitious live-streamed shows were mounted. For instance, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s April 15 gala “Worldwide Concert for Our Culture<\/a>” and the International Jazz Day Virtual Global Concert<\/a> sponsored by UNESCO in partnership with the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz were tent-pole events meant to proudly and loudly proclaim that jazz is here to stay, unbowed. Then attention turned to addressing those in distress \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which, given the economic slowdown accompanying the health crisis, may be just about everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the Jazz Foundation of America scheduled its #TheNewGig, a Musicians’ Emergency Fund Concert fundraiser<\/a> in mid-May with stars including Wayne Shorter promising to make appearances from afar, and videos from the JFA archives of Sonny Rollins, the Herbie Hancock Sextet and the Count Basie Orchestra, among many others. The JFA (disclosure: I’ve been a supporter almost since it’s start) also set up a Covid-19 Relief Fund <\/a>as did the Recording Academy’s affiliated charitable foundation MusiCares<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BandCamp<\/a>, the DIY musicians’ favorite platform for tracks and album sales, continues to designate days on which they renounce fees so the entirety of payments for recordings go to the music-makers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Taking matters into their own hands, players have sought and some have offered<\/a> tutorials on how to live-stream, how to teach music online and how to hold virtual fundraisers, among other potentially productive efforts. JazzOnTheTube<\/a>, a website and list-serve reaching some 30,000 subscribers daily, has published several useful, free ones<\/a>. From early March on, there have been an increasing number of such demonstrations of the jazz community taking care of itself and its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One such is the Jazz Coalition<\/a>, organized to provide juried $1000 commission grants to members’ nominees from all over the globe. Having quickly raised more than $70,000 from individuals contributing at least $100 or whatever they can to the cause (disclosure: I chipped in), the Coalition’s burgeoning membership has come from all sectors of the jazz ecosystem, including booking agents, publicists, record company representatives, producers, presenters, educators and journalists as well as internationally renowned musicians. Everyone is intent on making sure we and our hallowed, ever-relevant, genuinely essential jazz culture survives. On May 21 the first 48 grantees <\/a>were announced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many Jazz Coalition constituents have their own endeavors to guide income to the musical freelancers (aka, independent contractors, seldom qualifying for unemployment assistance) who typically depend on gigs booked one-at-a-time, at best a few months in advance. Such freelancers still suffer the disadvantage of not know what venues will open on what schedule, or if and when they do, audiences will brave infection to gather and listen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The alternative is found in the myriad webpages like Jazz at Lincoln Center’s<\/a> listing players’ online performances scheduled on platforms like Zoom, Facebook and Twitch.tv. Chicago’s jazz radio station WDCB has its Virtual Concert Calendar<\/a>, alt.weekly Dig Boston<\/a> is doing it. . . . I stopped researching when it became clear there are too many of these to name, and none is actually comprehensive. How could any single such listing be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ll note, however, that Fred Hersch has migrated from Facebook to Patreon<\/a> to produce weekly 15-to-20 minute “custom content”. Other thoughtfully curated streaming series:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, harpist Brandee Younger and bassist Dezron Douglas have been doing a weekly Friday 11am brunch set<\/a> from their apartment.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the web empowers us to tune in to live-streams from wherever they originate, many such schedules, events and support opportunities for musicians, too, are locally focused. Billboard magazine’s resource guide<\/a> for music professionals helpfully lists some potential avenues of support, which might help with rent, mortgages, health care or mental health counseling, state-by-state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The National Endowment of the Arts (which postponed its annual celebration of Jazz Masters, to have taken place in April for the first time at SFJazz), has also created a page on its website listing resources<\/a> for artists and arts organizations, It offers valuable information for freelancers<\/a>, but still the NEA’s funding continues to flow mostly to non-profit presenting groups rather than individual artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For-profit jazz-presenting businesses — the clubs, concert halls and festivals \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that have ongoing expenses like rent and personnel despite having no customers may have been qualified to apply for Federal, state or municipal loans or grants, though what was made available seems unequal to the need. In the light of this, small performance spaces that previously considered each other as rivals have banded together in the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA<\/a>). Cooperative groups of former competitors may be a winning concept during this period. Together, they (we) can leverage numbers and strengths to lobby for necessary attentions and assistance, hoping performance can flourish in such spaces again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s wished for in part because the live-streaming format isn’t perfect. A sense of genuine presence is unavoidably missing even for solo performers, despite its projection of a strange intimacy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A musician’s face, especially a horn player’s, may be visualized on screen much closer to the viewer\/listener than it would be even in the tiniest club; scrutiny, given the typical one-camera set-up, becomes intense. I’ve seen drummers video themselves from a vantage just an inch beyond their floor toms or ride cymbals, which puts an auditor as close to the struck surfaces as the drummer her\/himself. Pianists, bassists and guitarists typically favor fuller-body shots, but they, too, tend to be as near as the other end of the bench or the next chair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For groups, a latency lag of indeterminate moments requires musicians trying to connect through uplinks from their own rooms to anticipate each other even better than they ever have before. Won’t this necessarily affect the already subjectively collective projections of swing and groove? Click tracks audible to remotely deployed players through their headphones (but not to the rest of us) have been employed, as by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra on “”Quarantine Blues<\/a>” posted April 24, to address the issue,<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/ornette-happy-birthday-moment.jpg\")
Denardo Coleman behind him in blue shirt
photo by S\u00c3\u00a1nta Istv\u00c3\u00a1n Csaba<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/HenryGrimes-SzegedHungary_2011.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/JFA_1080x1080-2-1-1024x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n