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104 E. 126th Street • Suite 2D • New York, NY 10035
(212) 348-8300
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Tuesdays, March 3
7:00pm
Jazz on Film: The 20s
JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS
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JAZZ FOR CURIOUS READERS
Monday, March 2
CANCELLED due to inclement weather
Bill Crow
JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS
Tuesdays in March
7:00pm
Jazz on Film
March 3: The '20s
March 10: The '30s
March 17: The '40s
March 24: Jazz at The Apollo
LOCATION: The Apollo Theater
Thursday, March 12
6:30 pm
Toshiko Akiyoshi, pianist
Thursday, March 26
6:30 pm
Phoebe Jacobs,
jazz advocate
Friday, March 13
7:00 pm
Onaje Allan Gumbs with Avery Sharpe
Friday, March 27
7:00 pm
Henry Grimes and Marc Ribot
NEW SERIES: SATURDAY PANELS
Saturday, March 28
10:00am - 4:00pm
We Remember Frankie Newton and Pee Wee Russell
A day with George Wein, Dan Morgenstern, George Avakian and Nat Hentoff
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The National Jazz Museum in Harlem
March Schedule, 2009
Jazz for Curious Listeners:
Jazz
on Film (20s,
30s, 40s and 60s) and Jazz at the Apollo Theater
Harlem Speaks:
Toshiko
Akiyoshi and
Phoebe Jacobs
CANCELLED - Jazz for Curious Readers: Bill Crow
Harlem in the Himalayas:
Onaje
Allan Gumbs with Avery Sharpe, and Henry Grimes and Marc Ribot
NEW SERIES: Saturday Panel -
George
Wein, Nat
Hentoff, George Avakian, and Dan Morgenstern Remember Frankie Newton and Pee
Wee Russell
This Week
Jazz for Curious Listeners -
Jazz
on Film: The 20s
As
winter changes to spring, come warm your mind and soul with conversations, film
events, classes and performances presented by the National
Jazz Museum
in Harlem in March 2009.
As
this month honors the legacy of women, so we engage two ladies of jazz for Harlem Speaks. Pianist, arranger and
composer Toshiko Akiyoshi led one of the best big bands in jazz over the last
35 years. Her journey from Japan
to the heights of the jazz world, in collaboration with her husband, saxophonist
and flutist Lew Tabackin, is uniquely fascinating, as is the journey of Phoebe
Jacobs from the Bronx into the hearts of
countless jazz musicians for whom she has worked and advocated.
Our
Jazz for Curious Listeners series presents Jazz on Film
over several decades of the 20th century as well as a special
evening at the Apollo Theater, where many of the icons in the jazz pantheon
began their inimitable careers.
For
live jazz in performance, check out Harlem in Himalayas at the Rubin Museum of
Art, where pianist Onaje Allan Gumbs and bassist Avery Sharpe collaborate, followed by another duo show, featuring the legendary bassist Henry
Grimes and guitarist Marc Ribot.
Our
Saturday panel series continues with a discussion of the life and musical
legacies of two musicians deserving of wider recognition: trumpeter Frankie
Newton and clarinetist Pee Wee Russell. Each panelist—George Wein, Dan
Morgenstern, George Avakian and Nat Hentoff—has been featured at previous
museum events (i.e., Harlem Speaks and
Jazz for Curious Readers), but this special
gathering of men so key to the presentation, codification and documentation of
jazz music in the 20th century is historic in and of itself.
Monday, March 2, 2009
JAZZ FOR CURIOUS READERS
CANCELLED
Bill Crow
Location:
NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th
Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | register online
CANCELLED due to inclement weather
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS
Jazz on Film: The '20s
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | register online
Instructor, Dr. Lewis Porter
Jazz
and film technology came of age during the first few decades of the 20th
century. In this first of a series of Jazz on Film presentations, Dr. Lewis Porter will navigate the choppy waters of filmic
representations of jazz in light of the racial and cultural mores of the 1920s,
called the “Jazz Age.”
Remaining in March
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS
Jazz on Film: The '30s
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | register online
Known
as the “Swing Era” by historians of jazz, the 1930s heralded the primacy of the
big band in American popular culture. Orchestras led by Duke Ellington, Count
Basie, Benny Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Miller, and Cab Calloway,
among others, gave millions a soundtrack for the period, as radio shows spread
the joy of jazz across the nation. But jazz was also caught on film, as this
evening’s discussion and videos will make abundantly clear.
Thursday, March 12,
2009
HARLEM SPEAKS
6:30pm
Toshiko Akiyoshi
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | For more info: 212-348-8300
Toshiko
Akiyoshi's unique contributions to the jazz world have evolved like falling
dominoes through a series of events that started with a piano-loving little
Japanese girl in Manchuria and brought her to
prominence as an unparalleled pianist, composer and leader of the Toshiko
Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra.
Akiyoshi's interest in the piano started at age six, and by the time her family
had moved back to Japan
at the end of World War II. She had
developed a real love for music, and soon began playing piano professionally,
which eventually led to her being discovered by pianist Oscar Peterson in 1952
during a Norman Granz Jazz at the Philharmonic tour of Japan. On
Peterson’s recommendation, Toshiko recorded for Granz, and not long after, she
went to the U.S. to study at
the Berklee School of Music in Boston.
Her years
in Boston, and later on in New York, developed her into a first class
pianist. Her interest in composing and arranging came to fruition when she
moved to Los Angeles
in 1972 with her husband, saxophonist/flutist Lew Tabackin. The following year
they formed the world-renowned big band that became known as the Toshiko
Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra featuring Lew Tabackin. The band, which began as a vehicle
for Toshiko's own compositions, grew in stature during its 10 years on the west
coast and gained a reputation as one of the most excellent and innovative big
bands in jazz. In 1976 the band placed first in the Down Beat Critics' Poll and
her album, Long Yellow Road, was
named best jazz album of the year by Stereo Review.
In 1982
the couple returned to New York, where Toshiko
reformed her band with New York
musicians, In 1983 the new Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra featuring Lew
Tabackin had a critically successful debut at Carnegie Hall as part of the Kool
Jazz Festival. That same year a documentary film by Renee Cho depicting the
Akiyoshi/Tabackin move from L.A. to New York was released,
entitled "Jazz is My Native Language" (Rhapsody Video).
Toshiko
recorded 18 albums with the Jazz Orchestra, garnering 14 Grammy Award
nominations since 1976. The band was also voted #1 in Down Beat magazine's Best
Big Band category, and Toshiko has placed first in the Best Arranger and
Composer category in the Down Beat Readers' Poll, making her the first woman in
the history of jazz to have been so honored.
Toshiko
realized a long time dream in 1996 when she completed her autobiography.
"Life With Jazz." The book is now in its third printing in Japanese
and will soon be translated into Korean.
The
Orchestra followed the great Duke Ellington tradition of using each musician's
individual sound and style as an integral part of the ensemble's musical
identity. To this Akiyoshi adds her own complex, boppish lines and contemporary
colors and textures, mingled with elements of her Asian roots to produce a
sound that has no equal in jazz.
Summing up
her own career, Toshiko, with characteristic modesty commented in an interview
with the San Bernardino
Sun, "I would hope that my work might have more substance and more quality
rather than quantity of notes. And I hope the notes I produce today are more
selective than 20 years ago."
Friday, March13,
2008
HARLEM IN THE HIMALAYAS
7:00pm
Onaje Allan Gumbs with Avery Sharpe
Location:
Rubin Museum of Art
(150 West
17th Street)
$18 in advance | $20 at door |
Box Office: 212.620.5000 ext. 344
Onaje
Allan Gumbs, a guest of Harlem Speaks
in July 2007, is one of the industry’s most respected and talented musical
collaborators. He has worked for more than 30 years with an illustrious list of
jazz, R&B and pop artists. In 1974, he created a special arrangement of
“Stella By Starlight” for the New York Jazz Repertory Company as part of a
concert honoring Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall. He followed that with live and
recorded performances with such artists as Lenny White, Buster Williams, Cecil
McBee and Betty Carter. In 1975, Onaje joined forces with trumpeter, Nat Adderley
as part of his quintet contributing to the group’s releases on Atlantic and Steeplechase Records. Producer Nils Winter
of Steeplechase upon hearing Onaje’s improvisations, invited the young pianist
to record a solo piano project entitled Onaje.
In 1976, he
provided the arrangement for the song that was to become the signature piece
for the late great vocalist Phyllis Hyman, “Betcha By Golly Wow.” In 1978, the
Woody Shaw Group, for which Onaje was pianist, won the Down Beat Reader’s Poll
for Best Jazz Group and for Best Jazz Album (Rosewood).The album was later
nominated for a Grammy. In 1985, Onaje lent his keyboard and arrangement skills
to “Lady In My Life” on guitarist Stanley Jordan’s widely acclaimed debut
album, Magic Touch on Blue Note
Records.This was the first jazz album in history to maintain the #1 spot atop
Billboard Magazine’s jazz charts for more than 50 weeks.
In 1986,
Onaje received the “Min-on Art Award”...”in recognition of his great
contribution to the promotion and development of a new musical movement for
people with the aim of the creation of Peace...” Previous recipients of this
prestigious honor include Tina Turner, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and
Buster Williams. Motivated by the goal for World Peace, Onaje uses the practice
of Nicherin Daishonin’s Buddhism as a philosophical, spiritual and technical
approach to his life and his music.
Onaje
Allan Gumbs, whose most recent recording is titled “Sack Full of Dreams,”
continues to contribute his talents as a keyboardist, composer, arranger and
producer. As he states: “Music has a healing force that is immeasurable and I
am committed to being a part of it.”
Bassist
Avery Sharpe was born in Valdosta,
Georgia on
August 23, 1954. His first instrument was the piano. “I started playing when I
was eight years old,” he recalls. “My mother was a piano player in the Church of God in Christ, and she gave lessons to
everybody in the family — I'm the sixth of eight children — but it didn't stick
until it got to me.” He moved on to accordion and then switched to electric
bass in high school.
In 1972,
Sharpe enrolled at the University
of Massachusetts, where
he majored in Economics and minored in music, and continued to play electric
bass in gospel, funk, and rock groups. While at UMass, he met the jazz bassist
Reggie Workman, who encouraged him to learn the acoustic bass. Sharpe adapted
quickly to the big instrument, and within a few years he was performing with
such notables as Archie Shepp and Art Blakey. Shepp and Max Roach, his professors
at the time, had a major influence on him. Sharpe also performed in orchestra
and chamber groups at UMass, and completed one year of graduate school in Music
Performance. In 1980, he auditioned with McCoy Tyner and won a spot in the
pianist's group. He has worked with Tyner almost continuously since then,
playing hundreds of live gigs and appearing on more than 20 records with him.
Sharpe's
credits also include sideman stints with many other jazz greats, from Dizzy
Gillespie to Pat Metheny, as well as leading his own groups. His first
recording as a leader was the 1988 album Unspoken
Words on Sunnyside Records, which was praised by critic Jim Roberts as “a
diverse, challenging record that rewards repeated listening.” In 1994, he
recorded Extended Family, the first
CD of a trilogy released on Sharpe's own label, JKNM Records.
In 1989,
he wrote and conducted the soundtrack for the movie An Unremarkable Life; a
decade later, his six-movement piece America's
Promise debuted in a concert-hall performance that featured Sharpe's
quintet and a gospel choir backed by the Springfield
(Mass.)
Symphony Orchestra. In the 1990's Sharpe was commissioned by the Classical
group Fideleo to write 3 extended works for them.
Regardless
of the setting, Avery Sharpe always brings both exceptional musical skill and
unswerving honesty to the endeavor. His duo performance with Onaje Allan Gumbs
promises to render the immeasurable healing and empowering wonder of jazz.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS
Jazz on Film: The '40s
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | register online
World War
II. The recording ban. A transition from large to smaller ensembles, from swing
to bebop. These are several of the major happenings of the 1940s in relation to
jazz. Expect each of these themes (among others) to find reflection and
amplification in this session of Jazz on Film.
Special
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS
Jazz at the Apollo
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: The Apollo Theater
(253 W 125th Street)
FREE | register online
The
world-famous Apollo Theater in Harlem is a
testament to the great African-American musical performers of the 20th
century, regardless of genre. Yet the connection between this landmark venue
and jazz is special. Rare if ever does a month go by during the various public
programs at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem when senior music lovers and
musicians don’t recall witnessing, for instance, the great Ellington and Basie
big bands swinging with down-home majesty and emotive grace. The Apollo Theater
is essential to the living history of jazz, and to the careers of legends such
as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Gloria Lynne, each of whom won the
Amateur Night competition, launching their illustrious careers. Tonight’s Jazz
on Film will take place at the Apollo Theater, FREE. See you there.
Thursday, March 26,
2009
HARLEM SPEAKS
6:30 - 8:30pm
Phoebe Jacobs, jazz advocate Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | For more info: 212-348-8300
Phoebe
Jacobs, born in 1918 in the Bronx, began her
career in jazz as the hat check girl at her uncle’s club, where she met and
worked with jazz greats such as Sarah Vaughan, Eubie Blake, Duke Ellington,
Benny Goodman, and Ella Fitzgerald. “Sarah would say to me, ‘Gee, do you know
where I can get my dress shortened’ or where can I have my nails done?’ They
use to ask me things and I would do them for them. Then over the years they
began to count on me.”
Jacobs worked in public relations for various jazz record labels and clubs,
and became Louis Armstrong’s publicist, and, eventually, the Executive Vice
President of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, Inc.
In her
role with the Armstrong Foundation, Jacobs was instrumental in efforts to honor
his legacy, including the drive for the 1995 Louis Armstrong postal stamp. She
is also a founding member of the Jazz Foundation of America (JFA), an
organization devoted to aiding older jazz and blues musicians in financial
difficulty or those experiencing health problems. (JFA’s Executive Director,
Wendy Oxenhorn, was the guest of Harlem Speaks on February 26, 2009.)
In 2003,
Jacobs was honored with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Award for Leadership which
she received at the concert “Here’s to the Ladies: A Celebration of Great Women
in Jazz.” In 2007, her 89th birthday was celebrated at a JVC Jazz
Festival concert at the Danny Kaye Playhouse.
What
better way to honor Women’s History Month than to be present tonight, as the National Jazz
Museum in Harlem
presents an interview with a true jazz legend and dedicated philanthropist, Phoebe Jacobs?
Friday, March 27,
2008
HARLEM IN THE HIMALAYAS
7:00pm
Henry Grimes and Marc Ribot
Location:
Rubin Museum of Art
(150 West
17th Street)
$18 in advance | $20 at door |
Box Office: 212.620.5000 ext. 344
Master jazz musician (acoustic bass, violin) Henry Grimes
has played more than 300 concerts in 23 countries since May of 2003, when he
made his astonishing return to the music world after 35 years away.
He was born and raised in Philadelphia
and attended the Mastbaum
School and Juilliard. In
the '5O's and '6O's, he came up in the music playing and touring with Willis
"Gator Tail" Jackson, "Bullmoose" Jackson,
"Little" Willie John, and a number of other great R&B / soul
musicians; but, drawn to jazz, he went on to play, tour, and record with many
great jazz musicians of that era, including Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, Benny
Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Haynes, Lee Konitz, Steve Lacy, Charles Mingus,
Gerry Mulligan, Sunny Murray, Sonny Rollins, Roswell Rudd, Pharoah Sanders,
Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, and Rev. Frank Wright.
Sadly, a trip to the West Coast to work with Al Jarreau
and Jon Hendricks went awry, leaving Henry in Los Angeles at the end of the '60's with a
broken bass he couldn't pay to repair, so he sold it for a small sum and faded
away from the music world. Many years passed with nothing heard from him, as he
lived in his tiny rented room in an S.R.O. hotel in downtown Los Angeles, working as a manual laborer,
custodian, and maintenance man, and writing many volumes of handwritten poetry.
He was discovered there by a Georgia social worker and
fan in 2002 and was given a bass by William Parker, and after only a few weeks
of ferocious woodshedding, Henry emerged from his room to begin playing
concerts around Los Angeles and shortly afterwards made a triumphant return to
New York City in May 2003 to play in the Vision Festival.
Since then, often working as a leader, he has played,
toured, and/or recorded with musicians such
as Rashied Ali, Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson, Marilyn Crispell, Ted Curson,
Andrew Cyrille, Bill Dixon, Dave Douglas, Andrew Lamb, David Murray, William
Parker, Marc Ribot, and Cecil Taylor. Henry has also given a number of
workshops and master classes on major campuses, released several new
recordings, made his professional debut on a second instrument (the violin) at
the age of 7O, has now published the first volume of his poetry, "Signs
Along the Road." He has also been creating illustrations to accompany his new
recordings and publications. He has received many honors in recent years,
including four Meet the Composer grants and a grant from the Acadia Foundation.
He can be heard on more than 8O recordings on various labels. Henry Grimes now
lives and teaches in New York City.
Marc Ribot
(pronounced REE-bow) was born in Newark,
New Jersey in 1954. As a teen, he
played guitar in various garage bands while studying with his mentor, Haitian
classical guitarist and composer Frantz Casseus. After moving to New York City in 1978,
Ribot was a member of the soul/punk Realtones, and from 1984 - 1989, of John
Lurie's Lounge Lizards. Between 1979 and 1985, Ribot also worked as a side musician
with Brother Jack McDuff, Wilson Pickett, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Chuck
Berry, and many others.
Ribot's
recording credits include Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Marianne Faithful, Caetano
Veloso, Laurie Anderson, McCoy Tyner, T-Bone Burnett, The Jazz Passengers, The
Lounge Lizards, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Medeski Martin & Wood, James Carter,
Alan Toussaint, Allen Ginsburg, Madeline Peyroux, and many others, many of whom
hail from other countries and continents. Ribot frequently collaborates with
producer T Bone Burnett, most recently on Alison Krauss and Robert Plant's Grammy
award winning Raising Sand and
regularly works with composer John Zorn.
Marc's
talents have also been showcased with a full symphony orchestra. Composer
Stewart Wallace wrote a guitar concerto with orchestra specifically for Marc.
The piece was premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington
DC in July of 2004 and also appeared at The
Cabrillo Festival in Santa Cruz,
CA in August of 2005.
Marc is
currently touring with two bands, the Albert Ayler tribute project
"Spiritual Unity" (Pi Recordings), featuring original Ayler bassist
Henry Grimes, and Ceramic Dog featuring bassist Shahzad Ismaily an drummer Ches
Smith. Ceramic Dog will release their debut album "Party
Intellectuals" this May on Pi Recordings in the North America, and Enja in
Europe and Japan.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Saturday Panels
We Remember Frankie Newton and Pee Wee Russell
10:00am – 4:00pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | Reservations: 212-348-8300
Join
us for our Saturday panel, where George Wein, Dan Morgenstern, George Avakian
and Nat Hentoff will share their memories of trumpeter Frankie Newton and
clarinetist Pee Wee Russell.
PEE
WEE RUSSELL
Clarinetist
Pee Wee Russell was born Charles Ellsworth Russell in St.
Louis and began playing clarinet in Muskogee Oklahoma,
famous for giving the jazz world pianist Jay McShann. After early associations with Bix Beiderbecke and Frank Trumbauer, Russell wound up in New York in the late 20’s, and worked with Red Nichols and began appearing on soon-to-be classic recording dates. During the 1930’s, Russell worked with Louis Prima and Bobby Hackett, and became known for his craggy, idiosyncratic and completely cliché-free style. Eddie Condon featured Russell in his various projects throughout the 40’s, a decade that saw the clarinetist reach peaks of expressivity, and also gradually self-destruct.
By the mid-50’s, Russell was back in shape and until his death in 1969, continued to tour and record prolifically. Highlights included a set recorded at the Newport Jazz Festival with Thelonious Monk, an appearance on the Sound of Jazz TV broadcast, an album with Oliver Nelson, and quartet recordings that found him dealing with the challenges of contemporary jazz.
FRANKIE
NEWTON
Admired
by both Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, trumpeter Frankie Newton had a
relatively brief but artistically rewarding career. He had stints with Lloyd
Scott (1927-1929), Cecil Scott (1929-1930), Chick Webb, Elmer Snowden, Charlie
Johnson, and Sam Wooding, and appeared on Bessie Smith's final recording
session in 1933. Newton
worked with Charlie Barnet's short-lived integrated band in 1936 and with Teddy
Hill, before briefly becoming closely associated with bassist John Kirby and
his associates. The eventual John Kirby Sextet would have been the logical
place for the trumpeter, but a falling out in 1937 ended up with the younger Charlie
Shavers getting the spot in the commercially successful group. Newton instead
played for Mezz Mezzrow and Lucky Millinder, led a few record dates (including
participating in a set for Hugues Panassie), and worked at Cafe Society,
accompanying Billie Holiday on several of her records (most notably
"Strange Fruit"). As the 1940s progressed, Newton became less interested in music and
gradually faded from the scene, painting more than playing.
Nat
Hentoff has written that Newton
was “matched only by Miles Davis for intimately evocative and lyrical
storytelling.” Morgenstern has declared that “he was no ordinary man, and the
music he made was no ordinary music. He was a poet; his recorded solos have a
poignant lyricism of their own.” Come hear and witness the proof, as Loren
Schoenberg and his venerable guests delve into the archives of their memory and
record collections.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS
Jazz on Film: The '60s
7:00 – 8:30pm
Location: NJMH Visitors Center
(104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C)
FREE | register online
The turbulence of the 1960s was mirrored and in many ways presaged by jazz artists. John Coltrane, Paul Bley, Cannonball Adderley Ornette Coleman and many others found new ways to express the social foment of the era. Armstrong, Ellington, Basie, Fitzgerald and other icons continued to evolve as well. We’ll sample film from this roiling decade.
Visitors Center
104 East 126th Street, Suite 2C
Monday through Friday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m
close to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 trains to 125th Street
We’re waiting for you! Yes, that’s right. Our new Visitors Center is now open Monday through Friday (10 a.m. – 4 p.m.) and chock full of books, CDs and DVDs for your perusal. There is also a first-class exhibit of photos on the walls, so we hope you will come up and see us and also spread the word to any other curious folk who want to spend some time getting jazzed in Harlem.
Also, to find audio and video clips, event summaries, program updates and photographs galore from our previous events, venture here:
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The National Jazz Museum in Harlem is deeply dedicated to the legacy and continued growth of jazz. Your continued support of our events demonstrates your love of jazz and the level of community appreciation and interest in its further development. As we continue our efforts to bring you the best insights and live music (at little or no cost), your participation translates into a favorable reflection upon our efforts to build a physical museum worthy of this profound, emotionally riveting art form. We look forward to seeing you at our future events, and when you come, please bring a friend! |
This press release was composed and edited by Greg Thomas,
host of the web’s only jazz news and entertainment TV show, Jazz It Up!
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