Thursday, July 16, 2009

Reasons to be cheerful!?

I have heard of a number of stories about jazz's survival recently. Copenhagen Jazz House has been given £250,000 by Nordea Foundation, linked to a Danish bank; Jazz Times is about to re-emerge after being suspended; Jazz Journal has been reborn having merged with Jazz Review. Meanwhile, the Vortex has been given a large grant from an individual to pay for its piano.
Why is this happening in a recession? Hard to guess, but probably it's to do with jazz continuing to be a meaningful music, being played to a high level, whatever the economic environment. So, for that reason, it encourages people to give it money. (Certainly, nothing to do with public funding.)
There's a fantastic sense of community and all this clearly is leading to survival of the music in relatively satisfactory surrounds.

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