{"id":484,"date":"2011-08-16T23:14:57","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T03:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/?p=484"},"modified":"2011-08-17T14:44:09","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T18:44:09","slug":"jazz-audience-surveyed-segmented","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2011\/08\/jazz-audience-surveyed-segmented.html","title":{"rendered":"Jazz audience surveyed, segmented"},"content":{"rendered":"

The jazz audience can be described by its parts: hip, participatory young artist\/musicians, less experienced and cost-conscious but willing social butterflies, mid-aged and older cultural omnivores\u00c2\u00a0and dull-but-desirable comfort seekers,\u00c2\u00a0according to a\u00c2\u00a0segmentation study<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0sponsored by the\u00c2\u00a0Jazz Audience Initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Some of this has\u00c2\u00a0been\u00c2\u00a0reported by NPR’s A Blog Supreme as “Actually Useful Information About the Jazz Audience<\/a>” (thanks, Patrick\u00c2\u00a0Jarenwattananon), but these categories which the study used to characterize the varied behavior of the music’s purported audience slivers for discussion at a “jazz leadership” convening last week by Columbus, Ohio’s Jazz Arts Group<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0have not previously been publicized.I was privileged to be in the room as Alan S. Brown, researcher and<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>principal\u00c2\u00a0of\u00c2\u00a0WolfBrown<\/a>, the segmentation study’s author, presented a chart-packed slide show breaking out research findings for the benefit of a powerful if incomplete cross-section of U.S. jazz organizations.\u00c2\u00a0Also at the meeting: representatives from Jazz at Lincoln Center, Monterey Jazz Festival, Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild Jazz, AllAboutJazz.com, Chamber Music America, the Jazz Education Network, Jazz St. Louis, University of Michigan’s University Musical Society, Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts<\/a> as well as the Jazz Artists Group’s flagship Columbus Jazz Orchestra and Ben Cameron, program director for the arts of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation<\/a>, which has funded the Jazz Audience Initiative at the level of $200,000 over 21 months.<\/p>\n

The study itself, described by project director Christy Farnbauch as a foot thick if it were to be printed, will instead be posted in its entirety online in an estimated six weeks; some of the pie charts and figures showing that the jazz audience is a fractious and\/or many splendored thing were unveiled at a town-hall meeting at the Association of Performing Artists convention in New York City last January. Data compiled by sampling ticket buyers of a bulging handfull of major jazz venues plus “potential” jazz fan\/ticket buyers living in Central Ohio arrive at several conclusions which seem intuitive once they are expressed, yet easier to label than act upon. Among them:<\/p>\n