The Monday Night Jam at the Seattle Jazz Fellowship

Beginning on January 20, 2025, the weekly Monday night jam session at the Seattle Jazz Fellowship became something very different from any session that had historicially taken place in Seattle—it became an extremely popular weekly destination for gen-z patrons in their teens and twenties looking for a place to socialize and dig into an art form they had only recently been made unaware of. While the 7:30 PM session had previously drawn younger musicians from area high school and college programs, it had never had a sizable audience. Young musicians came to mingle and play with more seasoned professionals, essentially engaging in the mentorship cycle that has always moved jazz forward across generations.

As the calendar flipped to a new year, a young social media influencer named Michelle Villafuerte posted a TikTok video of the weekly event that went viral. Soon, attendees spread the word on social media platforms and simply in conversation with friends and acquaintances. Every week since that lone Monday in Janurary, the jazz non-profit's basement club has been full, with a line running up the stairs, around the corner, and down First Avenue in Seattle's Pioneer Square, waiting to gain entrance. For the session's house band, The Thomas Marriott Quartet, it has been a revelation, a blessing. The audience listens intently, applauds solos and engages fully. The same is true during the actual jam that follows the quartet's opening twenty to thirty minute set. The average age of the audience is in the range of 18-25. It brings with it great hope for the future of jazz in Seattle, and the irony that a social media phenomenon has encouraged its participants to disengage from online socialization, and to gather socially for real.

Here is a collection of photos from the Seattle Jazz Fellowship in Seattle, spread across nine months, featuring mostly young musicians unknown to the public. They are shown engaging with Seattle jazz musicians Thomas Marriott, Tim Kennedy, Trevor Ford, D'Vonne Lewis, Jacqueline Tabor, Brittany Anjou and Matt Jorgensen. All photos are the work of Lisa Hagen Glynn.

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