As reported in these pages, I had the pleasure recently of returning to my birthplace of Pittsburgh, PA to moderate panel discussions and participate in a very rewarding commemorative weekend honoring the rich legacy of that city’s African American Musicians’ Union local. The city is rife with jazz history and has produced an incredible number of jazz masters. My experience that weekend suggested that Pittsburgh’s jazz legacy continues apace, at least as far as producing young musicians. One of the many people I met that weekend was Maggie Johnson, a bright young woman who is forging a unique effort on behalf of her city’s jazz musicians called Jazzspace. Some follow-up questions for Maggie Johnson were certainly in order.

Please tell us about Jazzspace and your emerging artist program.

The ultimate goal of JAZZSPACE is to become a space for jazz, participating and enhancing Pittsburgh’s East End Renaissance, and a place where emerging artists work, play, and live. The idea is multi-generational, with emerging professional artists in constant interaction with the Jazz Masters of the city as well as giving back to younger generations through masterclasses, workshops, performances, etc.

What was your motivation for starting Jazzspace?

I was literally praying for a way to combine my interests and skills in arts business, performing, education and mentoring, and my love for jazz. In the wee hours of one morning in 2008, JAZZSPACE just hit me and I started furiously typing out the mission and vision for the program. I’m pretty passionate about jazz and it’s special role in communicating truth, and God’s heart for community. That it was brought to the world through black culture, and all its unique gifts and trials, is no accident.

What activities have you fostered thus far with Jazzspace?

In this, our inaugural year, we’ve chosen (through juried online application) two spectacularly talented Resident Artists, Anqwenique Wingfield (vocalist) and Joe Sheehan (piano). You can read more about them at http://www.jazzspace.com/artists.php. They have each received $400 to support creative projects related to their music. In addition to promoting them generally, we are planning to highlight them in a special concert this summer, which as of right now is scheduled for August 17.

Vocalist Anqwenique Wingfield

Pianist Joe Sheehan

We are also taking applications for the 2012-2013 class of Resident Artists. The online application is here: http://www.jazzspace.com/apply.php. The program is currently focused on Pittsburgh and is therefore limited to residents of Allegheny County. But who knows that it might not serve as a model for a national program with satellites someday!

Who are some of the people involved with Jazzspace and what’s been the response to your efforts thus far?

In addition to our Resident Artists, we have a wonderful group of Advisors, who are all deeply committed to seeing the ultimate vision of JAZZSPACE come to pass. Some, like Dr. Harry Clark, who founded Pittsburgh’s Creative and Performing Arts High School and is a major player “behind the scenes” in several Pittsburgh jazz initiatives, lend both passion and management expertise. Others, like Etta Cox, who is one of Pittsburgh’s staple Jazz Masters, bring support directly from the artists’ perspective.

The overall response to JAZZSPACE has been extremely positive. Everyone welcomes the idea with open arms. However, time will tell whether the jazz community and other arts supporters will also embrace it with their pocketbooks! With some trepidation, I launched our first online fundraising campaign through IndieGoGo.com and our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas.org, this past spring. While we didn’t hit the final goal, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of “friendraising” it created and how many folks were willing to put their money behind the vision. As we focus more on fundraising in the coming year, we hope folks will continue to check us out online (http://www.jazzspace.com/support.php) and consider making a gift to help us keep moving forward.

How do you envision Jazzspace fostering activities which will move jazz music forward in Pittsburgh?

One of the biggest issues facing jazz in Pittsburgh (and almost everywhere) is the fact that young people have so relatively little exposure and real interaction with it, despite it playing such a key role in our cultural heritage as a city. I would love to see JAZZSPACE become a sort of hub for connecting generations of aspiring and established musicians with kids in our public schools or other established arts programs, specifically for the purpose of learning about jazz; its history as well as its constant role in changing and enhancing popular music.

Are your Jazzspace mission and activities things you can envision being duplicated in other cities? If so, what advice would you have for other like-minded individuals in other jazz communities?

Indeed! JAZZSPACE was influenced by artist residencies and other programs I’ve observed in my career (such as Betty Carter‘s Jazz Ahead at the Kennedy Center), and I hope that what we’re doing is pulling together the best elements of all-and some innovation of my own-to create a program that can be replicated, but also tailored to other communities. At this point, my advice to like-minded individuals would be to simply get in touch with me so we can brainstorm together! My email is maggie@jazzspace.com.

On this the 45th anniversary of the passing on to ancestry of the great John William Coltrane, my home radio station WPFW 89.3 FM (Pacifica Radio in the Washington, DC metro area, streaming live at www.wpfw.org) wisely chose to run Frank Kofsky’s November 1966 interview with Trane during today’s Freedom of Speech segment 3:00-4:00pm (go online and catch it in the station’s archives). For those not familiar, Frank Kofsky was an unabashed left wing music critic who wrote the manifesto Black Music, White Business and was a major contributor to the Jazz magazine, the last bastion of left wing jazz reportage. If you read any of Kofsky’s writings you approached that interview knowing that Kofsky was fully in the bag for whatever Trane might say; completely in the Amen Corner as it were.

One aspect I was struck by was John Coltrane’s matter-of-fact level of complete humility. This congenial, modest man was not given to deep philosophical pronouncements, no matter how much Kofsky strained for such pearls of wisdom. And Kofsky tried mightily, though not in a manner of goading, to wrench philosophy out of Trane. At one point he builds up a head of inquisitive steam relative to Trane’s then use of of various African percussion and assorted percussive “toys” to augment his music. Asked about the cosmic significance of that percussive augmentation to Coltrane’s music, the master (and here you can almost visualize Trane perhaps lowering his eyes a bit and shrugging his shoulders) responds to the effect that “…I don’t know man, it just happens…”

Throughout the interview Kofsky continues to push the old canard that was widely afoot back then that John Coltrane and his peers and cohorts were somehow part of some “New Thing” making “New Music.” Again, the gentle and patient Trane – a man not at all given to profuse pronouncements – doesn’t really buy into what had largely become marketing tools for Impulse! Records, the magazines and writers, trickling down to the music-buying public. From this view those terms “New Thing” and “New Music” are as specious as the term avant garde. As Muhal Richard Abrams used to say at those old NJSO board meetings, “…how many decades are we going to be avant garde?…”, the sense being that the search for new vistas was by now a lifetime pursuit that ceased many moons ago to be so-called avant garde.

The absolute summation of where John Coltrane was coming from and what he forever pursued was encapsulated in his simple response to Kofsky that “I want to be a force for good…” And that boys & girls is the essence of John William Coltrane.

If you wish to purchase a copy of Frank Kofsky’s November 1966 interview with John Coltrane go online to www.pacificaradioarchives.org.

In the afterglow of another exceptional closing weekend at the 2012 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival we took advantage of an opportunity to witness the progress of the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music the Monday after Jazzfest. Earlier that weekend we had chatted with Ann Marie Wilkins, the driven and industrious woman who manages Branford Marsalis, Harry Connick, Jr., the Marsalis Music record label, and most important to this conversation is board chair of the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, a jewel of a 17,000 square foot facility.

You may recall this ambitious post-Hurricane Katrina, Ninth Ward redevelopment project. In the wake of the devastation of what New Orleans residents simply refer to as “The Storm”, Branford and Harry hatched a plan to salvage at least part of the storm’s Ground Zero, the Ninth Ward – the part of New Orleans with the highest storm-delivered misery index of all. Their idea was to develop the Musicians Village to house a percentage of the musicians who had been driven from the Crescent City in the horrific wake of the failure of the federal levees. Part of that development would be an arts-based community center to be named after Branford’s father and Harry’s mentor, Ellis Marsalis.

To get you up to speed on the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, we followed-up our tour with some questions for the Center’s executive director Michele Jean-Pierre.

Please give a quick sense of the backstory behind the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.
After Hurricane Katrina, Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr. wanted to find a way to help musicians come back to New Orleans. They joined with New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity to create the Musicians’ Village, a residential community primarily for musicians with a community center as its focal point. Ellis Marsalis, father of Branford and teacher of Harry, is also an internationally respected jazz musician and educator. The Center would appropriately be named the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music
to honor an individual they both love and respect.

Much beloved New Orleans drummer and WWOZ radio show host Bob French sitting amidst the post-storm devastation in the Lower Ninth Ward. French was one of the initial residents of the subsequent Musicians Village development.

Who do you hope to serve with the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, what is your core constituency?
The core constituency of the Center are the residents of the Musicians’ Village and the children who live in the 9th ward, the largest of the 17 wards of New Orleans. We will also make the Center available to other members of the New Orleans community on a space available basis.

What is Ellis’ ongoing relationship to the Center?
Ellis is the visionary behind our music education program and he advises our Director of Music Education, Daryl Dickerson. He is
actively involved with music instructor selection and guides us on matters related to curriculum and instruction.

What kinds of daily activities happen at the Center?
During the school year, we run an afterschool music education program Mondays through Thursdays. Students attend twice
a week for 3 hour blocks. Each enrolled student takes one hour of their selected instrument, one hour of Piano in our Piano
lab where Music Theory is being taught and reinforced through piano instruction and one hour of Homework Assistance and or
Computer Lab. Our Computer Lab work focuses on strengthening Music Theory lessons in a fun and interactive way.

We also offer vocal and dance classes.

We also feed the children an assortment of fresh cut seasonal fruits, yogurt, granola bars, raw veggies, multi grain crackers and
cheeses before they head to their first class. They also have the option of returning after their last class to obtain more snacks to keep them
until they go home.

On Saturdays, the focus is our Strings program. Children may register for Violin, Viola, Cello, Upright Bass and guitar classes.
On Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings, we also offer an adult piano class. Classes start early so once again, we provide
healthy option breakfast foods.

We also have occasional master classes for our students held in our Performance Hall. Students have an opportunity to hear professional musicians, ask
questions and learn first- hand from them about their journeys in becoming professional musicians.

This summer, we will implement our Audio/Lighting/Video Production Intern Program. We have partnered with the City of New Orleans and the NOLA Works
Program and 14 youth between the ages of 15 – 18 will participate in this 6 week summer experience and receive a paycheck for their learning experience.
We will also offer our regular Music Education Program Mondays through Thursday to over 100 beginner and intermediate youth of the 9th ward. On Saturdays, we
will offer our regular Strings Program with the capacity to reach an additional 45 students.

How has the Center been funded thus far?
The Center has been supported through the generous donations of people throughout the world, who in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina and the near destruction of important institutions of learning, saw the importance of their continued donations of funds to assist
in the rebuilding efforts. Branford and Harry engaged people worldwide in their crusade to develop this Center and continue their untiring
efforts of enlisting the help of others to support the mission of the Center.
[Editor’s note: It should be added here that both Branford and Harry have contributed significant sweat equity and financial support – including concert fees – to this project; their respective involvement goes far deeper than simply lending their auspicious names to this project.]

How does the Center interface with the surrounding Musicians Village, and what’s been the response to the Center thus far of the occupants of the Musicians Village?
Prior to the completion of the construction of the Center, focus groups were conducted with residents to get their input of how the Center could best serve their needs.
The information from these focus group discussions played an important role in the planning for which services the residents identified as priorities. Currently, the
Center offers extended hours for the residents to use practice rooms, the computer lab, obtain administrative support, attend exercise classes as well as adult piano classes.

The Center will also provide facilities for Village residents to record CDs and plans to offer a Village resident performance series in the near future. Quarterly the Center
holds a public community event. These have included: Christmas children’s movie night and toy distribution by Santa, a Good Friday Fish Fry with outdoor activities
for the family and a visit from the Easter Bunny, and a special Night Out on Crime Event which included a community Barbeque and access to community resource information.

The residents response has been extremely positive. This is evidenced by the number of resident children who attend classes in our afterschool and Saturday programming at
the Center. The residents also enjoy accessing the classes offered at the Center.

When I visited there you and Ann Marie mentioned a project underway – or in the planning stages – to record the occupants of the Musicians Village; please tell us more about that project.

It is our intention to allow Village residents to record CDs at the Center – the Performance Hall was designed to double as a recording studio (Ellis Marsalis and Japanese Jazz Pianist,
Makoto Ozone recorded the first CD in the hall in May). Thanks for your inquiry about all of the current activities at the Center. We have just started on our journey but remain excited about the potential for growth of not only our students but the residents who choose to utilize the many offerings at the Center.

The beautiful concert hall at the Ellis Marsalis Center.

Amidst all the various perceived “ills” prescribed to jazz by its enthusiasts – young musicians failing to “advance” the music stylistically; the younger generations of musicians arriving on the jazz scene simply pale next to the founders and the masters; lack of enough venues fostering jazz performance opportunities; the dwindling jazz radio universe; the holistic, big umbrella approach of so many jazz festivals which invite other music under the big tent and still call the event a “jazz” festival; the “cookie-cutter” view of jazz education, despite the fact that it is perhaps the healthiest sector of the so-called jazz community; jazz somehow being “taken” from its originators, the African American community, etc., etc. I have long maintained that the biggest issue facing jazz and other creative music forms is audience: lack (of sufficient) thereof, lack of substantive numbers of “new” audience, the graying of the creative music audience… The fact remains that there are more than sufficient numbers of young people who still desire to make creative music arriving on the scene daily. Whether there will be sufficient audience to enjoy, nurture, and appreciate the efforts of those young (middle-aged and old for that matter) musicians is another matter entirely. Audience development remains job #1.

The main point here is that we need to get back to the old fashioned ways of turning people on to good music using the amazing technology of today. I have seen kids enjoy jazz when it is shared with them, but it needs to be shared with them in a way where they too will start”speaking the language” and begin to share with their friends.

What also intrigued me about Shoshana’s comments is that she signed off representing what to me was a new entity: Audience Development Specialists (http://www.buildmyaudience.com based in Boulder, CO). Clearly some follow-up questions were in order; I asked, Shoshana agreed…

Shoshana Fanizza, Audience Development Specialists: sfanizza@buildmyaudience.com

I’m intrigued by your organization title, Audience Development Specialists; tell us more.

Back in 2006 I went through an audience development initiative hosted by our local arts alliance, Boulder County Arts Alliance (BCAA). After these sessions, something clicked with me. I began an audience development plan for the second half of my season with the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, and it made a huge difference! We increased audiences until we sold out the last event of the season. A sold out show had not happened in 7 years. In 2008 I opened Audience Development Specialists to help a variety of artists and arts organizations to build their audiences with audience development. Each artist and organization is unique. I help each one to discover who they are, research and find the right audience matches, and design a plan with them that they can begin to implement. During this 3-step method process, which I also like to call The Matchmaker Audience Development Program, my clients become educated about audience development and eventually learn a new philosophy for how to manage their arts businesses. When the audience development plan has all the right elements, I have seen increases in audience and resources of 30-50% within one concert! Audience development works when you put the time and effort into implementing a thoughtful plan.

In your work with Audience Development Specialists, have you done any specific work to address the jazz audience? If so, what have you discovered?

I have yet to work with a jazz artist/organization, but I am most welcome to the opportunity. I lived in the Chicago area for about 28 years, and my parents did listen to jazz in our household. I was a music major at Northern Illinois University, which has a focused jazz program. Many of my friends were jazz majors, and despite being a horn student, I did learn the basics on how to improvise and transcribe through my jazz history class. Through my experiences of being in touch with jazz musicians and being a member of the jazz audience, I do have some insight.

What I have discovered through my jazz experiences is that jazz definitely has similar challenges to the classical music world. The label of “jazz” can be a barrier, since the term has preconceptions attached to it. When the label is dropped, people discover that “jazz” consists of many different styles, and they are likely to find a style that they enjoy.

Other discoveries, audiences attend when they are a fan of the musicians and word of mouth is one of the biggest factors in how they found out about an event and why they attend.

For example, I always enjoyed attending Jazz Combo Night at the university. I found a big difference in audience attendance from combo to combo. These musicians didn’t have the history or the marketing to gain their audience, they had to earn it themselves by building their following. There were musicians that were naturals at building relationships and starting the buzz for word of mouth. These musicians had more of an audience compared to the others. This is what made the difference back then, before social media, and now that we do have social media, everyone has the opportunity and can learn how to master these skills.

Lastly, I have seen how authentic jazz education can help to build audiences. I mention “authentic” because the education needs to be presented passionately and expressed sincerely in a way that is down to earth for people to understand. I do not feel it is about changing the music, but perhaps more about how you present the music. I would love to see more efforts toward programs that ease the potential jazz audience member into learning about and listening to jazz. This means that you may have special concerts for this particular group. Listening to jazz (and classical for that matter) requires building new ear muscles, especially for people that are foreign to jazz.

Some of the best authentic jazz presentations occur at festivals since it is a more relaxed and open atmosphere for both the musicians and the audience. The music offerings at these festivals are more in line with the beginner listener too. For obtaining new audiences, community outreach concerts can make a difference, but they would need to be incorporated on a regular basis. Afterward, continuing a relationship with these people and increasing their jazz listening experiences is recommended.

In addition to your very detailed and thoughtful comment, left in the wake of my jazz audience editorial, there was another comment from a veteran and quite skeptical jazz journalist. He was skeptical about the idea I posited of artists and presenters considering an expanded level of audience-to-artist interaction during a performance as one potential way of demystifying jazz and helping grow the jazz audience. Your comments seemed to indicate that you think otherwise on that subject; please elaborate your take.

I am a big advocate for levels of presentations. I feel that for the beginning jazz audience members, an increase in interaction would be welcome. As an audience member grows into jazz, they will not require as much interaction. This is why knowing your audience is important since this knowledge will be key in selecting which type of presentation would be best. If you are performing in a jazz club where the patrons are already jazz aficionados, you may not need as much interaction. However, if you are performing an outreach concert for newbies, increased interaction is very helpful, especially when carried out in an authentic way as aforementioned. Don’t be shy in asking if there are new jazz listeners in your audience and then cater your interaction to the percentage that is in attendance.

What would you say jazz artists might consider adapting to their performance that could potentially assist in making the music more audience friendly?

It would be best if music sets were selected for the audience that is attending. Again, if you are likely to have more beginner listeners, you may not want to present something that makes the ear do flip flops. Ease the listeners in and then increase their level of listening by adding more challenging sets in succession. Perhaps present a series of performances that will take a group of beginners through this process, or make sure you build relationships with people to keep in touch with where they are in their jazz listening journeys.

Any further thoughts on this subject you’d like to share?

In thinking about building jazz audiences, I do feel it is a matter of exposing more people to the music. More outreach efforts, grassroots sharing and authentic educational programs can be very effective. In general, audience development is about building relationships with your audiences. This means that you are thinking about the audience in conjunction with your music. When jazz was popular, the music was listened to because it was everywhere. Now that jazz is more of a niche in our expanding world of music, building relationships with an audience that would enjoy jazz is the way to increase popularity and build audiences. I do feel that jazz would benefit from more collaborations so it is not as isolated. Jazz can become a part of the community again. Be true to jazz, but also be open to possibilities that will increase jazz awareness.

The legacy of the colored/black/African American (covering the different 20th century racial nomenclature) musicians’ union locals (separate from the “regular” musicians’ union locals by racial segregation) is a rich and vastly under-reported root source for much of the creative music of the 20th century. The bare fact that such racially separate musicians union locals even existed was called into question recently when a book researcher I’ve become acquainted with visited the musicians’ union local in Wilmington, Delaware and was told by an ill-informed young person working there that separate black musicians’ union locals simply never existed(!). This ludicrous scenario came from the researcher in response to a photo I posted on Facebook from this past weekend’s commemorative event in Pittsburgh and served as a reminder of the importance of such legacy preservation activities.

This photo, which depicts what was surely A Great Day in Pittsburgh, was part of a wonderful weekend sponsored by Pittsburgh’s African American Jazz Preservation Society. I was humbled to serve as guest speaker at this Friday/Saturday event dubbed “Dedication To a Legacy”. The weekend served to commemorate the grand legacy of Pittsburgh’s African American Local 471 of the American Federation of Musicians – the separate black musicians union local necessitated by racial segregation that was founded in 1908. Besides surviving members of Local 471, which merged in the 1960s with Pittsburgh’s Local 60 of the American Federation of Musicians with somewhat disastrous consequences (a much longer story for later), and members of the historic Colored Musicians Club of Buffalo, NY, and the Clef Club of Philadelphia – both representing the historic black musicians union locals in their respective communities – participated in panel discussions and a group oral history interview. The panel discussion topics certainly give you the gist of the discussions: Segregated Musicians’ Unions: Significance, Survival and Impact; and Black Musicians Unions: Moving the Legacy Forward.

The core activity of the weekend came on Saturday morning when surviving members of Local 471 gathered on Crawford Street between Wylie & Webster Avenues in Pittsburgh’s historic African American neighborhood known as the Hill District. Surviving members took group photos beneath the shiny new marker; government, arts and labor union officials made glowing remarks, and the beautiful June morning was also enhanced by music from representatives of the next generation of Pittsburgh jazz musicians, led by bassist Miles Jackson.

It should be noted that this official marker is one of several such commemoratives scattered around the city, including one I spotted in front of the house where Art Blakey grew up, in the Hill District. Additionally there’s a condo development whose facade is imbedded with the names of some of the city’s many jazz greats, including Blakey, Ahmad Jamal, Billy Eckstine, Billy Strayhorn, Roy Eldridge, Mary Lou Williams, George Benson; and there’s a city bus emblazoned with the name of Erroll Garner; the list of Pittsburgh jazz greats is quite auspicious.