BOSTON, MA. (Dawn Singh Publicity/ www.dawnsinghpublicity.com/ www.jazzhouse.org) - The Jazz Journalists Association will present, "The
Future of Jazz in Boston, Part 2," on Monday, February 7, 2005, 6:30-9:30 pm, at the Regattabar at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, MA. Panelists are:
Christopher Lydon and Donal Fox, co moderators; Gary Giddins, jazz journalist and author;
Roger Brown, President of Berklee College of Music; Ann McQueen, Program Officer,
Boston Foundation; and Bob Blumenthal, consultant to Marsalis Music. The event is free and open to the public.
Panelists will address the topic of the business of jazz and how arts, culture and economics affect the arts in
Boston and across America. They will discuss how changing audience and marketing trends are affecting the arts–jazz in particular–both in
Boston and beyond, and how musicians and the industry may direct their efforts to benefit the needs of ticket-buyers, musicians. recording companies, funding organizations, marketers and presenters in a positive and productive way. They hope to begin an assessment of the economic impact of jazz on the City of
Boston including tuition, club revenues, advertising dollars, retailers, engineers, tourism, etc.
The association's November panel at Scullers Jazz Club had over 160 attendees and included panelists Steve Bensusan, President, Blue Note; Bill Beuttler,jazz journalist,
Boston Globe; Steve Charbonneau, Program Manager, WGBH Radio; Donal Fox, composer and pianist; Fenton Hollander, Executive Director, Water Music/Mainstage; Producer, Real Deal Jazz Club & Cafe, Cambridge; Maggie Scott, jazz vocalist and vocal teacher, Berklee College of Music; Fred Taylor, Entertainment Director, Scullers Jazz Club, Boston; Owner, HT Productions, and was moderated by Jon Hammond, WRIU Radio, Kingston, Rhode Island.
Christopher Lydon has been a distinctive voice in print, television and radio journalism for more than 30 years. He covered presidential campaigns for the New York Times, anchored "The Ten O'Clock News" on WGBH TV, and founded "The Connection" on national public radio. He is a pioneer audioblogger whose recent work is posted at
Christopher Lydon Interviews (https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/lydon/) and on the group blog BOPNews (https://www.bopnews.com/) which he founded last year to cover "the Blogging of the President, 2004."
Gary Giddins wrote the Village Voice column, Weather Bird" for 30 years. His eight books and three documentary films have garnered unparalleled recognition for jazz, including a
National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, two Ralph J. Gleason
Music Book Awards, five ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, a Peabody and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Giddins received national attention for his commentary in the Ken
Burns Jazz series on public television. His most recent book, Weatherbird (Oxford University Press, November 2004) is a collection of over 140 essays, reviews and articles written over a fourteen year period with an illuminating commentary on contemporary jazz events, on today's top musicians, on the best records of the year and on leading figures from the past. Other highlights include a look at avant-garde music and his controversial essay, "How Come Jazz Isn't Dead," which advances a theory about the way art is born exploited, celebrated and sidelined to the museum.
Roger Brown is President of Berklee College of Music, the world's largest independent music college and premier learning lab for contemporary music. Brown assumed the role in June 2004 as the third president–and the first who is not a member of the Berk family–in Berklee's 59-year history. Brown's earlier career was co-founder and CEO of Bright Horizons Family Solutions and Bright Horizons Foundation for Children. He was the recipient of the 1999 Caring Corporation Award from the Child Care Action Campaign in recognition of his advocacy for better early childhood education. He was named the "National Entrepreneur of the Year" in 1996 by Ernst and Young/USA Today, and "Best Entrepreneur" by Businessweek Magazine in 1997.
Bob Blumenthal began writing jazz criticism in 1969 for
Boston After Dark (later known as the
Boston Phoenix) while in college and continued to contribute to that paper though 1989. After serving as guest critic for The
Boston Globe during its jazz festival for a decade, he became a regular
Globe contributor in 1990 and a weekly columnist in 1993, and continued in both roles until 2002. Throughout these years, during which he worked as an attorney, primarily for the Massachusetts Department of Education, Blumenthal was also contributing to The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Down Beat and JazzTimes, and writing numerous album notes. He was one of six commissioners for the Recording Indusry Association of
America who selected the White House Record Library during the Carter Administration and currently serves on the boards of the Jazz Alliance International and the All Newton
Music School.
Blumenthal has received Grammy Awards for best album notes in 1999 for Coltrane: The Classic Quartet/Complete Impulse! StudioRecordings and in 2000 for Miles Davis & John Coltrane: The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-61, as well as the Jazz Journalists Association
Excellence in Feature and Review Writing Award in 2001. In March 2002, Blumenthal became the permanent creative consultant to Marsalis Music, the record label founded by saxophonist Branford Marsalis.
Donal Fox is an internationally acclaimed composer, pianist and improviser in both the jazz and classical fields. His numerous awards include a 1997 Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition, a 1998 Fellowship from the Bogliasco Foundation (Italy) and 1999, 2001 and 2003 nominations for a CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts.
Fox served as the first African American composer-in-residence with the St. Louis Symphony from 1991-1992. In the 1993-94 season, Mr. Fox was a special guest artist at the Library of Congress in a program that was recorded by
National Public
Radio and was a visiting artist at Harvard University where he received a Certificate of Recognition from the President of Harvard College for his contribution to the arts In the 2003-2004 season he was featured concert artist with the American Composer Orchestra Improvise Festival! where he gave the New York premier performance of T. J. Anderson's piano concerto
Boogie Woogie Concertante with the MSM Jazz Philharmonic at LaGuardia Concert Hall. The concerto was written especially for Mr. Fox and asks for him to improvise all the solo passages and cadenzas in the eight movement work with spontaneous interactive dialogue with the orchestra.
Fox's exciting and innovative "Jazz Duet Series" has included concerts and collaborations with
Oliver Lake, John Stubblefield, Billy Pierce,
David Murray, Elliott Sharp,
Regina Carter, Stefon Harris, Al Foster, Gary Burton, John Patitucci and poet
Quincy Troupe. He has recorded as composer and pianist for New World Records, Evidence Records,
Music & Arts, Passin' Thru Records, Yamaha's Original Artist Series and Wergo Records.
Ann McQueen is Program Officer of the Arts Fund at the
Boston Foundation with primary responsibility for grantmaking to organizations working in arts and culture and in the urban environment. She is actively involved in research and convening on behalf of the interests of those sectors and works with the Foundation's development team in cultivating gifts and grants for the endowed Arts Fund. In 2003, the
Boston Foundation headed a major study on "Funding for Cultural Organizations in
Boston and Nine Other Metropolitan Areas" that documented a local cultural sector that rivals that of large cities but noted that Boston's cultural organizations suffer from a lack of support from corporate, foundation and government resources.
The JJA panel will be held from 6:30-9:30 pm at the Regattabar at the Charles Hotel, One
Bennett St., Cambridge, MA. It is free and open to the public. Mr. Giddins will hold a booksigning and Mr. Fox will have CD's available at the event.
Henrietta's Table, the restaurant on the second floor of the Charles Hotel, will offer a 10% discount beginning at 5:30 pm to those who are planning to attend the panel by notifying their server or the host. Parking tickets will be validated at the Regattabar and will offer the regular club discount.
The Jazz Journalists Association is a 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit organization of internationally-based writers, editors, photographers, broadcasters and media specialists who institute collegial and educational programs for the appreciation, documentation and promulgation of jazz. As of January 2005, JJA comprises more than 400 members, mostly in the US and Canada, but also in Australia, Europe, the UK, Japan, Mexico, Moscow, South Africa and South America.
For more information on the JJA or the panel presentation February 7, contact Dawn Singh at 857-544-0739 or
[email protected] https://www.jazzhouse.org/ 
