Two years ago, several of Chicago's most famous corporations and foundations dared to invent a new model for funding the arts.
In a dramatic move, they joined forces to create an informal philanthropic consortium dedicated to supporting music. This meant, in effect, that each of these big-league organizations risked losing some of the high visibility -- or the “branding" power, in marketers' terms -- that accrues with being the sole or lead underwriter of an arts event.
More radical still, they decided to pour their resources not into safe and conventional musical outfits, such as symphony orchestras and opera companies, but into a less formally organized music that long has been an orphan when it comes to funding: jazz.
Since then, the aptly named Chicago Jazz Partnership has funneled approximately $1.5 million in cash (and nearly as much in in-kind contributions, such as production costs and musician airfares) into a music that's internationally identified with this city.
Granted, that may not seem like a lot of money when compared with the funding of institutions such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which has an operating budget of $57.6 million and an endowment of $202 million. But it's huge in jazz, a music that somehow has flourished for most of a century on nightclub cover charges and bar tabs, but with scant institutional support (multimillion dollar organizations such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, in New York, and SFJAZZ, in San Francisco, remain the exceptions in the low-budget world of jazz).
So when the stage lights go up Thursday night for Millennium Park's third annual “Made in Chicago" jazz series, a brilliantly programmed lineup underwritten by the Chicago Jazz Partnership, audiences once again can witness how this novel funding approach has altered the musical landscape of this city.
“It certainly has introduced new audiences to jazz," says Amina Dickerson, who heads corporate giving for Kraft Foods and involved the company in the Chicago Jazz Partnership from the outset, in 2005.
Considering that approximately 50,000 listeners have attended each season of “Made in Chicago," Dickerson does not exaggerate.
“I think we've also shown that there is great breadth and strength in the discipline [of jazz]," adds Dickerson, “and that it's dynamic, not stuck in a certain time period."
Indeed, “Made in Chicago" shows such as Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez's historic collaboration with Chicago's 911 Mambo Orchestra and cornetist Rob Mazurek's effectively titled Exploding Star Orchestra shattered many myths that still hover around jazz. By attracting listeners of every demographic imaginable, these concerts -- and others -- demolished the commonly held misconception of jazz as a music for an effete, elite few.
To see rambunctious families and romantic couples converging on the Pritzker Pavilion for the free concerts in large numbers (the biggest ones, such as Perez's in 2005, attracted more than 10,000 listeners), was to behold the impact of the Chicago Jazz Partnership.
A marketing study conducted by the consortium in 2005 estimated that although jazz commanded a local audience of at least 750,000 to 1 million (and possibly twice those figures), the entire non-profit jazz scene in Chicago generated about $4 million in annual revenue. The huge Chicago jazz market clearly was being underserved by the philanthropic community, and the Chicago Jazz Partnership aimed to change that.
Continue...
In a dramatic move, they joined forces to create an informal philanthropic consortium dedicated to supporting music. This meant, in effect, that each of these big-league organizations risked losing some of the high visibility -- or the “branding" power, in marketers' terms -- that accrues with being the sole or lead underwriter of an arts event.
More radical still, they decided to pour their resources not into safe and conventional musical outfits, such as symphony orchestras and opera companies, but into a less formally organized music that long has been an orphan when it comes to funding: jazz.
Since then, the aptly named Chicago Jazz Partnership has funneled approximately $1.5 million in cash (and nearly as much in in-kind contributions, such as production costs and musician airfares) into a music that's internationally identified with this city.
Granted, that may not seem like a lot of money when compared with the funding of institutions such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which has an operating budget of $57.6 million and an endowment of $202 million. But it's huge in jazz, a music that somehow has flourished for most of a century on nightclub cover charges and bar tabs, but with scant institutional support (multimillion dollar organizations such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, in New York, and SFJAZZ, in San Francisco, remain the exceptions in the low-budget world of jazz).
So when the stage lights go up Thursday night for Millennium Park's third annual “Made in Chicago" jazz series, a brilliantly programmed lineup underwritten by the Chicago Jazz Partnership, audiences once again can witness how this novel funding approach has altered the musical landscape of this city.
“It certainly has introduced new audiences to jazz," says Amina Dickerson, who heads corporate giving for Kraft Foods and involved the company in the Chicago Jazz Partnership from the outset, in 2005.
Considering that approximately 50,000 listeners have attended each season of “Made in Chicago," Dickerson does not exaggerate.
“I think we've also shown that there is great breadth and strength in the discipline [of jazz]," adds Dickerson, “and that it's dynamic, not stuck in a certain time period."
Indeed, “Made in Chicago" shows such as Panamanian pianist Danilo Perez's historic collaboration with Chicago's 911 Mambo Orchestra and cornetist Rob Mazurek's effectively titled Exploding Star Orchestra shattered many myths that still hover around jazz. By attracting listeners of every demographic imaginable, these concerts -- and others -- demolished the commonly held misconception of jazz as a music for an effete, elite few.
To see rambunctious families and romantic couples converging on the Pritzker Pavilion for the free concerts in large numbers (the biggest ones, such as Perez's in 2005, attracted more than 10,000 listeners), was to behold the impact of the Chicago Jazz Partnership.
A marketing study conducted by the consortium in 2005 estimated that although jazz commanded a local audience of at least 750,000 to 1 million (and possibly twice those figures), the entire non-profit jazz scene in Chicago generated about $4 million in annual revenue. The huge Chicago jazz market clearly was being underserved by the philanthropic community, and the Chicago Jazz Partnership aimed to change that.
Continue...
For more information contact All About Jazz.
