Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation has announced the first round of grants for the Jazz.NEXT program. Jazz.NEXT is a new national jazz initiative designed to encourage the application of technology in substantive and innovative approaches to developing audiences; communicating with the public; marketing, distributing, and selling the work of jazz artists; and building a more robust jazz infrastructure better positioned to meet current and future challenges. The Jazz.NEXT program is made possible through a $1 million grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
The Foundation received a total of 96 Jazz.NEXT applications requesting nearly $4.2 million in support. The applications were submitted by individual artists, jazz presenters and festivals, local arts councils, museums, public radio stations, service organizations, and university-based centers for jazz studies, among others. All regions of the United States were represented in the applicant pool with applications from 25 different states and jurisdictions.
The Foundation convened a panel of five experienced representatives from the jazz, presenting, philanthropy and technology sectors to review applications. The panel included:
Gavin Clabaugh, Vice President, Information Services
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation (Flint, MI)
Chuck Helm, Director, Performing Arts Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, OH)
Danny Melnick, President
Absolutely Live Entertainment, LLC (New York, NY)
James Sharper, Project Manager
AKQA (Washington, DC)
Molly Sheridan, Director, Counterstream Radio/NewMusicBox
American Music Center (Baltimore, MD)
The following organizations received grants
National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB)
Oakland, CA
Planning Grant : $32,800
As jazz musicians and small record labels move to digital recording formats and distribution, jazz radio stations require significant assistance to access the music and convert their existing CD and vinyl libraries to digital formats. NFCB will engage up to eight public radio jazz stations, representing the spectrum of the nearly 70 public stations from across the country that primarily program jazz, to explore the planning, training and development of best practices to access, catalog and store digital music. The planning process will ultimately yield a blueprint to develop curriculum that trains jazz stations to create and maintain digital music libraries and enhance their music programming.
Monterey Jazz Festival
Monterey, CA
Implementation Grant: $98,300
The Monterey Jazz Festival will enhance its Internet-based Digital Music Education Project, an interactive online music resource supporting jazz education, through the incorporation of new technology applications. Proposed upgrades will combine digital sound files, music downloads, streaming video, and images from the Festivals extensive photo archives, and link these elements together to create a compelling digital education environment responsive to the needs of each visitor to the site. While the site will be free of charge, opportunities exist for generating potential new revenue streams for the host and featured artists through downloadable music sales.
National Public Radio (NPR)
Washington, DC
Implementation Grant: $98,300
NPR will launch a new website solely focused on jazz, NPR.org/jazz. The new site will build on the organizations jazz blog, A Blog Supreme, which presents commentary, analysis, hyperlinks, streaming audio and embedded videos; their highly influential music website, NPR.org/music; and their on-air jazz programming. NPR member stations producing original jazz content will be featured on the new site, while receiving support to enhance their own websites. With a weekly audience of over 27.5 million people and partnerships with more than 860 public radio stations in the United States, NPR.org/jazz presents the potential to dramatically reach new constituencies for jazz and deepen their relationship with existing jazz fans.
Savannah Music Festival
Savannah, GA
Implementation Grant: $97,600
Utilizing new technology applications, the Savannah Music Festival will expand the reach of its music education program Swing Central High School Jazz Band Competition and Workshop to a broader national audience. The current program, which provides intensive instruction by renowned jazz artists and music educators, reaches students at 50 high schools across the United States. Jazz.NEXT support will enable the development of a Swing Central interactive website with online video lessons, student/faculty performance webcasts and profiles, streaming of Festival performances, and links to artists websites, among other content, which would then be available as a pedagogical tool for interested jazz students and educators across the country.
Walker Art Center
Minneapolis, MN
Implementation Grant: $97,900
The Walker Arts Center is a multidisciplinary presenting organization noted for its effective use of new technologies to engage audiences across disciplines. Support will allow the Walker to test multiple new and existing technological approaches to broaden its jazz audiences and deepen their experiences. Content will be developed for mobile and web-based applications, including blogs and webcasts, and hardware will be purchased to accommodate the technical demands of the expansion. A one-year administrative Jazz/New Media Fellow will be hired to launch and coordinate all online jazz initiatives and fully integrate jazz programming and content throughout all digital platforms.
To help sustain the Jazz.NEXT grantees through the current economic crisis, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation provided additional funding, totaling 31% of each grant, to be designated towards core operating support. The grant awards noted above reflect this additional funding.
In addition to project support, Jazz.NEXT will annually convene grant recipients to foster dialogue and share information, and widely disseminate program findings through selected case studies. Guidelines for the next round of Jazz.NEXT will be available in fall 2009 online at www.midatlanticarts.org . Questions concerning the program should be addressed to Sara Donnelly, Program Officer, Jazz at [email protected] or 410-539-6656 x116. The application deadline is July 1, 2010 for implementation grants only.
About Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation
Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation supports the richness and diversity of the region's arts resources and promotes wider access to the art and artists of the region, nation and world. The region includes nine states and jurisdictions that are closely related by geography or culture: District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Virginia, and West Virginia.
About the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is to improve the quality of peoples lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and the prevention of child maltreatment, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Dukes properties.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
