As previously planned, my mom, Aliza and I got to the movie theater at Lincoln Center precisely one hour and a half early for Star Trek<\/i>. I’d guesstimate we were about People 29, 30 and 31 in line at that point, and out of those people, we probably doubled the number of women. <\/p>\n
When I was watching The Kentucky Derby a few weekends back, I was entertaining myself by pounding mint juleps and wondering if there was some young horse publicist person out there whining (whinnying?) about how everybody pays attention to The Kentucky Derby but people just aren’t into horse-racing the rest of the year. How do we harness the Derby audience for other races? When will we stop young people from bridling at the costs in involved in the sport? Why are we saddled with an old, rich-person stigma<\/i>? That led me to think about how every industry – even those that are flourishing – wants a specific demographic they don’t yet have. A few years back, for example, the Red Sox had three players on the show <\/a>Queer Eye for the Straight Guy<\/a> <\/i>in an attempt to reach out to the gay\/lesbian communities of Boston. <\/p>\n If jazz publicists and marketers are not concerned with the gender situation, they certainly should be. In my (albeit limited) experience with jazz, the genre is men playing music for men. Like football. (Yes, I realize women watch football, but you see my point.) In the four years I was at Dartmouth, there was one woman in the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble. Girls auditioned, but none except this one was good enough to make it, apparently. I asked members of Stefon Harris<\/a>‘ Blackout about this issue when we were at a Chamber Music America New Music Institute together, and they said most of the time women are singers in jazz, but rarely instrumentalist performers. The sign at the Village Vanguard says the capacity is 123 people. At the 11:30pm set on Saturday, I counted 17 women including myself watching the three men on stage. What is that all about? It really bothered me. <\/p>\n Some Google work led to these:<\/p>\n Yahoo – Why don’t girls like jazz<\/a>? One prize of a man named “george g” offered, “Because it’s not lightweight music”, and another gem – “Jeff Taylor” – suggested, “Although greatly generalizing I would have to say that why ‘girls’![\"Star-Trek-line.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/Star-Trek-line.jpg\")
<\/span>That said, after posting about the Mother’s Day\/Star Trek<\/i> correlation on Friday, I’ve received five additional reports of friends taking their mothers to the movie for Mother’s Day. [I also learned, by going with a friend on Sunday, that people actually took their mothers – and daughters – to Next to Normal<\/a> <\/i>on Mother’s Day, which is just too bizarre for me to handle. Did they know what the musical was about? More on Next to Normal<\/i>‘s classical music bashing at a later date.] <\/p>\n
\n(under the age of 30) as well as plenty of ‘guys’ don’t usually like
\njazz is because jazz is art music and requires much *effort* to enjoy.” george g. and Jeff….call me. <\/i>Groan.<\/p>\n