Tag Archives: Seattle JazzEd

Arts & Culture

Jam Session in South Seattle Next Week Aims to Improve Gender Parity in Jazz

by Ben Adlin

The young musicians of Seattle JazzED’s Girls Ellington Project are inviting community members to an evening of improv and live music on Tuesday, March 15, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the Royal Room in Columbia City. 

The free event is geared at empowering “women and nonbinary people within the wider jazz community to be seen and heard,” the group said in a press release. “Femme instrumentalists and vocalists that wish to jam will be welcome on stage” to join the all-girl high-school jazz band and other Seattle musicians.

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Community

Seattle JazzED Opens Registration for Free and Reduced-Cost Music Lessons

by Ben Adlin

One of the region’s premier music education nonprofits is now enrolling young people in jazz lessons for the school year, continuing its mission of teaching jazz as “a quintessential Black American art form” and expanding its focus on equitable access and instruction. Tuition is pay-what-you-can, with no questions asked.

Seattle JazzED is signing up students in grades 4 through 12 for classes that run quarterly from mid-October through June. Students of all skill levels are welcome, and instruments are available to borrow free of charge. A blended in-person and virtual program will allow younger, unvaccinated learners to participate from home.

Registration is open online at the organization’s website. Instruments include flute, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, guitar, bass, and drums, as well as two new options this year: violin and cello.

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Features

OPINION: Why Local Jazz Must Survive

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Story and photos by Glenn Nelson

If drummer D’Vonne Lewis isn’t the hardest working musician on the Seattle jazz scene, he is, by all accounts, in the top 1%. Typically, he played two to three gigs per day, every day of the week. Lewis was so busy he even stopped practicing because, spending all his time playing live music, he, his ear, and his body already knew the drill. 

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic and performances started cancelling. 

“Oh man, this is getting ugly,” Lewis remembers thinking.

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