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Well, we all love April here at Consilience Productions because it's "Jazz Appreciation Month" at the Smithsonian Institution down in Washington, DC:

Jazz Appreciation Month 2011 -- the 10th Anniversary -- examines the legacies of jazz women, and their advocates, who helped transform race, gender and social relations in the U.S. in the quest to build a more just and equitable nation.

They have a wonderful website set up for this month with events listings, archived performances & blogs, a directory of jazz societies, and a fantastic list of 112 ways to celebrate jazz, starting with these suggestions:

Churches:
Hold a Jazz Vespers service.

Commission a concert of Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts, or one of the religious works composed by Mary Lou Williams or Dave Brubeck, or another sacred composition in the jazz idiom.

Collectors:
If you have extra or unwanted recordings or books, donate them to a local high school, college, nursing home, or community center.

Join the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors (www.geocities.com/iajrc/index.htm).

To honor the musicians whom you revere, make sure your collection is being properly preserved. Consider eventually donating it to an appropriate national institution.

Fans:
Attend a concert by your local high school or college jazz band.

Listen to a jazz CD that is new to you. Try to stretch your ears. If you need some guidance, try The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 4th edition, by Richard Cook and Brian Morton, Tom Piazza's Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz.

Read a good book on jazz.

Find a new jazz website.

Listen to a radio station that plays genuine jazz.

Go to "This Date in Jazz History" (lower right-hand corner of that page), pick an anniversary, and go out find some music by that musician to explore.

Pay a pilgrimage to your favorite jazz city, or to a jazz museum, or to a musician's birthplace or gravesite.

View Satchmo, Jazz on a Summer's Day, Straight No Chaser, or another jazz documentary or performance video.

Log onto a distant jazz radio station on the web.

If you travel in the United States, use The Da Capo Jazz and Blues Lover's Guide to the U.S., by Christiane Bird, as your guide to jazz clubs and historical locations in 25 cities.

Join your local jazz society. If none exists, organize one.

Subscribe to a jazz magazines, such as Down Beat, Jazz Times, Jazziz. Others include: Cadence, Marge Hofacre's Jazz News, The Mississippi Rag, and from Canada -- Coda, Planet Jazz, and The Jazz Report.

Host jazz listening sessions in your home.

Hold a jazz-themed party in honor of a favorite musician, or to celebrate jazz in general.

Read a jazz-related poem--such as those in The Jazz Poetry Anthology, edited by Sascha Feinstein and Yusef Komunyakaa.

Consider a jazz-related artwork (such as those reproduced in Seeing Jazz: Artists and Writers on Jazz, compiled by the Smithsonian Institution's Marquette Folley-Cooper, Deborah Macanic, and Janice O'Neil.)

All of the above are wonderful suggestions, but the most important suggestion you can follow as a fan is to go see this music live...and pay for it!

According to this disheartening article from Boston (you might have to log in, but it's free and copied in its entirety below), there is now a 25 year-old jazz ensemble, the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra, that is paying audience members to attend their shows:

How can a band ensure that people will show up to its next gig? Pay the audience.

That seems to be the philosophy of the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra. The group, a Boston institution that started performing in 1985, has decided to pay $1 each to the first 50 people who show up for its April 29 concert at the Cambridge YMCA Theater. Everyone else will have to pay $12 ($8 for students and seniors).

"We've got some of the top musicians in Boston in the group, and we're writing music that deserves to be heard," JCAO leader Darrell Katz said in a statement. "We decided to give a dollar to each of the first 50 people who come to our concert. Plus we're going to have a lottery where all who come are eligible to win $50 at the end of the night. I just want people to experience the joy of this music."

OK, suffice it to say that this stunt is really about not charging a cover to the first 50 attendees who show up, but paying them even $1.00 sends a horrible message, even if it is part of a marketing "schtick."

Jazz musicians are hard working artists who have devoted their lives to an art form that could only come out of the American experience. Most likely, each professional jazz musician has devoted at least 10,000 hours to mastering his or her instrument, and to think the role of the jazz artist is unworthy of proper remuneration is just wrong.

Please celebrate "Jazz Appreciation Month" by supporting live jazz! Go pay real American money to see a performance in your neighborhood by real American jazz musicians playing America's Classical Music!

I indeed do have a lot of records that could be given to others! I had read about the Jazz Appreciation Month on another blog, it sounds cool. I truly appreciate jazz music.

Jazz

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