Jazz On The Tube — which serves 30,000 jazz-lovin’ subscribers to emails with embedded performance videos daily — has posted the best start-up live-streaming suggestions.
Good information and valuable inks for players, teachers, producer-presenters, jazz support and service organizations and maybe even writers – anyone who might possibly cast performances for online consumption. And very significantly, Jazz at Lincoln Center has opened a blog where such scheduled jazz live-streams can be posted and found.
As New York, California, Illinois and other U.S. locales request and/or require a suspension of public gatherings, the most obvious, available (and so far low cost) option is to turn to media platforms, as communicators of every sort are doing. The personal broadcast — streaming of live or pre-produced video, or even audio-only podcasting, can serve fans, maintain a presence and (it’s fervently hoped) make some bit of money towards replacing what everyone will lose from in-person gigs.
Pianist Fred Hersch has been first out of the box, committing to live-streaming daily mini concerts from his living room, 1pm Eastern Daily Time (10am PST, 7pm in Europe) — https://www.facebook.com/fredherschmusic. An Die Musik, a Baltimore venue, broadcast what it promoted as it’s “first” live streaming event Friday, 3/20, of the Warren Wolf Quartet — charging viewers $5 to see it, with intent to do more. Experimental Sound Studio, a Chicago non-profit presenting contemporary composition and improvisation (Ken Vandermark is among their curators), posted a schedule of “Quarantine Concerts,” but as of 3/21 was being flagged by YouTube for “inappropriate content” so sought a “friendlier platform and switched to Twitch.
Jazz on the Tube is eager to post links to upcoming jazz-streaming online, as is AllAboutJazz, now promoting live-stream events and offering to host uploads. But Jazz at Lincoln Center‘s “corona jazz livestreams” blog, to be updated daily, could become the go-to platform for knowing who’s playing via what link when, as JALC has announced plans to ramp up all its online content by digging into seven years of video’d concerts, panels and classes. Wynton Marsalis is also intending to sit for participatory online chats.
Organizations such as New Music USA are telling members they’ll promote life-streamed events on their websites and feeds — a practice which seems like to grow, fast. Indeed, anyone who belongs to any such organization should look into what the organization’s plan is for online activity to be of general benefit. The Jazz Journalists Association’s JazzOnLockdown series is one initiative, born out of the recently launched campaign “Working the Beat,” which all JJA members (and unaffiliated colleagues, too) are welcome to join.
But since most jazz musicians (and jazz journalists) are self-employed freelancers, it’s probably essential to rely on ourselves and do it ourselves.. Adapting or heightening one’s media game may seem tiresome, if not daunting, but in reality it’s no longer so time intensive and difficult. It’s simply a matter of experimenting, improvising, taking your time and trying again so you can eventually use the array of current cheap and available tools that can connect us online to jam for and with your correspondents (friends/family/fans/international audience). Trying these new methods can be fun. Still we all hope they won’t be so singularly necessary — the only space to convene, assuredly safe from a virus — for very long.
