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Dear All About Jazz Readers,

If you're familiar with All About Jazz, you know that we've dedicated over two decades to supporting jazz as an art form, and more importantly, the creative musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made All About Jazz one of the most culturally important websites of its kind in the world reaching hundreds of thousands of readers every month. However, to expand our offerings and develop new means to foster jazz discovery we need your help.

You can become a sustaining member for a modest $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky Google ads PLUS deliver exclusive content and provide access to future articles for a full year! This combination will not only improve your AAJ experience, it will allow us to continue to rigorously build on the great work we first started in 1995. Read on to view our project ideas...

Out and About: The Super Fans

You've seen them around. They're at all the gigs, their attention focused deeply on the bandstand, as much a part of their local jazz scenes as the musicians and venues. They know and love the music, and musicians love them back. These passionate music-goers are The Super Fans, and they are an essential part of the concert experience. "Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force... When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand." (Karl A. Menninger) Each month, AAJ focuses the attention back on one of The Super Fans to find out what it is they love about live jazz. By Tessa Souter and Andrea Wolper.

OUT AND ABOUT: THE SUPER FANS

Meet Sarah V.

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One of our youngest Super Fans yet, Sarah V might also be our most dedicated, attending over 200 concerts a year, and even moving to New York City to immerse herself more completely in the music scene. Like Super Fan “Jazz Judy" Balos, she likes to sit way up front--which, as you'll find out when you read on, comes with some degree of risk! Tell us a bit about yourself. I spent most of my ...

OUT AND ABOUT: THE SUPER FANS

Meet Maurice Edwards

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We think every Super Fan column is special, but this one has a couple of firsts: a flat out refusal to answer a question, and some strong language. We love it! Maurice Edwards caught the jazz bug at an age when he was too young to fully understand it, yet he was so determined to “crack the code" that he took on jazz like a course of study. It's no surprise that someone with that level of commitment has some ...

OUT AND ABOUT: THE SUPER FANS

Meet David Richardson

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Wherever he goes, David Richardson makes it his business to seek out the best in jazz. From Siberia, Moscow, and St. Petersburg to Costa Rica, Europe to the U.S., you'll find him meeting up with fellow jazz-loving Facebook friends, following his favorite musicians, and finding new places to listen. But his obsession with jazz doesn't end with being a consumer: he started a company called The Real Jazz Ambassadors to make documentaries about beloved musicians, one of whom is the ...

OUT AND ABOUT: THE SUPER FANS

Celebrating the 2017 Super Fans

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You've seen them around. They're at all the gigs, their attention focused deeply on the bandstand, as much a part of their local jazz scenes as the musicians and venues. They know and love the music, and musicians love them back. These passionate music-goers are The Super Fans, and they are an essential part of the concert experience. “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force... When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and ...

OUT AND ABOUT: THE SUPER FANS

Meet Geri St. Clair

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Welcome to KC Super Fans, part ll! Tom and Geri (no, not Tom and Jerry!) aren't the first spousal Super Fan team we've featured (that distinction goes to Roberta DeNicola and Richard Berger), but they're our first jny: Kansas City super fans, and we love them for it. Geri St. Clair and her partner in life, love, and jazz, October Super Fan Tom Wells, make it absolutely clear--should anyone have doubts--that their city has great musical offerings and a powerful ...

OUT AND ABOUT: THE SUPER FANS

Meet Tom Wells

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Born and raised in that other “capital of jazz"--jny: Kansas City, birthplace of Charlie Parker--Super Fan Tom Wells, along with long-time jazz date, his wife, Geri St. Clair (a future Super Fan--stay tuned!), is a huge supporter of the local scene. How huge? Well, Tom and Geri once followed the University of Missouri Kansas City's Jazz Orchestra all the way to jny: Paris, jny: Switzerland and jny: Holland for the “jazz experience of a lifetime." Tell us a ...

OUT AND ABOUT: THE SUPER FANS

Meet H. Alonzo Jennings

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H. Alonzo Jennings, artist, photographer, poet, and jazz aficionado, has been photographing jazz musicians since 1976 and going out to support live jazz music for even longer. His photographs include images of jazz legends such as Billy Eckstine, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan and Cassandra Wilson. “My objective as an artist/photographer is to provide a visual record of these sublime moments of transcendence, reflecting the purity and honest spirituality of the artist's souls." Music is no less than an entryway to ...

OUT AND ABOUT: THE SUPER FANS

Meet Abby London Crawford

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Abby London Crawford is just the sort of Super Fan this column was created for. A jazz hero, she can be seen all over New York city at live music events, radiating love and positivity. But being a listener alone has never been enough for Abby, who's found numerous ways to nurture and support the music and the people she holds so dear. Never one to draw attention to herself, she exemplifies the old adage, “still waters run deep"; if ...

OUT AND ABOUT: THE SUPER FANS

Meet Donna M.

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Reader: Are you a jazz Super Fan? Do you know a jazz Super Fan? If so, be sure to see the call-to-action at the end of this column. But first, meet our Super Fan for June, Donna M.: Raised on soul music, Donna M. was a relative late-comer to jazz (Vince Guaraldi's Peanuts score notwithstanding!), but once she got the message, she jumped in as a full-fledged Super Fan. Her journey with jazz took her from tragic loss ...

OUT AND ABOUT: THE SUPER FANS

Meet James Busby

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Our youngest Super Fan to date, and our first from the west coast, James Busby was weaned on the popular music of the '70s and '80s. His first jazz concert--Donald Brown at a local club in Knoxville, Tennesse for a $3 cover--was life-changing. He may not have discovered jazz until he was in college, but ever since then he's been in deep enough to go the extra mile--even when the extra mile means driving from Knoxville to Atlanta, or flying ...