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Diminished scale Jazz audiences dropping more sharply than a C-flat minor seventh! by G r e g Cahill
J
eez, what’s happening to the jazz audience? Last summer, the National Endowment for the Arts released its periodic study on arts participation in the United States. The mainstream media largely overlooked the study, but its findings are starting to resonate more and more in such niche media as Chamber Music America. The news was grim for arts organizations overall, but for jazz fans...well, did the Mayans predict this apocalypse? According to the survey, the average age of a jazz event attendee in 1982 was 29, but in 2008 that had risen to 46. More startling, the percentage of adults ages 18-24 attending a jazz event in that period dropped a staggering 58 percent, a far greater decline than any other sector of the arts audience. Those figures were especially alarming to jazz historian Ted Gioia, blogging on jazz. com. He’s the editor of that website and the brother of North Bay poet and ex-NEA chairman Dana Gioia, and he’s been sounding the alarm for some time, noting that whenever a nightclub or festival needs to shore up its bottom line, it jettisons the jazz programming.
That is the case in San Francisco, historically one of the great jazz cities, where Yoshi’s S.F. cut back its jazz shows in favor of a more eclectic roster of shows. “If there is one positive sign from the NEA study, it comes from the figures on the online audience for music,” Gioia opined. “Close to 50 million Americans have some exposure to music via the Internet each week. This could be a pathway toward expanding the audience for jazz and other performance genres.” The struggles are old news: The audience has been dwindling for years and Stuart Nicholson’s provocative 2005 book, Is Jazz Dead: Or Has it Moved to a New Address?, raised many of these same concerns. But all is not lost. Filmmakers Michael Rivoira, Lars Larson and Peter J. Vogt sought that “new address” in the thoughtprovoking documentary Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense. This illuminating documentary—which premiered last year at the Mill Valley Film Festival and will be released on DVD April 20—explores this ever-changing creative force through insightful interviews and electrifying concert footage that spotlight the
Bearers of the jazz flame include, clockwise from top, the Faraway Brothers, the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, and Medeski, Martin and Wood.
current crop of jazz musicians and captures the essence of this mercurial music. Trumpet player Terence Blanchard, who has scored
several Spike Lee films, calls these times the “quiet revolution,” a moment in jazz history when inventive young players are shunning commercial success and redefining the genre, even as many in the jazz community hold fast to past masters. Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter are among the veterans interviewed. But the spotlight belongs to such up-and-coming acts as Jason Moran, the Bad Plus, Garage a Trois, the daKAH Hip-Hop Orchestra, Robert Glasper and Esperanza Spalding, among others. The scene in which the daring Norwegian keyboardist and electronic musician Bugge Wesseltoft transforms a grand piano into a percussive jazz juggernaut alone is worth the price of admission. Rent it. And support live jazz. Check out the eclectic Faraway Brothers (with jazz guitarist Eric McFadden) Friday, Jan. 29, at 19 Broadway in Fairfax (where the jazz duo Dori & Dave hold down a regular Sunday spot). Groove to In the Mood, a big-band, swing-dance revue appearing Feb. 8 at the Wells Fargo Center in Santa Rosa. Visit Hopmonk Tavern in Sebastopol, a showplace for New Orleans funk and jazz (the amazing Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey will be there Feb. 13). Catch Medeski, Martin and Wood on Feb. 23 at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma. And ask your local school district how you can help the jazz program. Keep jazz alive. < Improvise with Greg at gcahill51@gmail.com. Lay down a beat of your own on TownSquare, at
›› pacificsun.com 24 PACIFIC SUN JANUARY 29 – FEBRUARY 4, 2010