Jimmy Heath recently said 
he’s been hearing since he was a youngster that jazz is dying. The saxophonist and composer/arranger will be 84 in October. Joining him in discounting death rumors is a younger man, the veteran entrepreneur Todd Barkan, who runs the oddly named but vital Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, a bastion of jazz in New York City. Barkan is preparing a fall festival designed to help insure the music’s vitality by bringing together some of its wise elders with promising younger musicians. Pia Catton writes about the project in today’s Wall Street Journal.
“We are reaching a critical stage in jazz music because we’ve lost a lot of people in the last few years,” Mr. Barkan said. “Older artists teach a lot by example and the practice of jazz.”
To learn of Barkan’s plans for the festival and read all of the article, which includes an embedded video, go here.
I think they are very wrong that jazz is dying. There are so many great young players coming up. Jazz will continue to evolve-—just as the ’20s were very different from the ’40s, which were very different than the ’60s. The music will inevitably change, but it’s always thriving, even if the community is relatively small.
A quote: “Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny” Frank Zappa