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Greater Madison Jazz Consortium Receives $60,000 Grant
Money Will Fund Jazz Initiatives in the City
The Greater Madison Jazz Consortium received the second of two grants from The John and Carolyn Peterson Foundation. This year’s $60,000 grant brings the total from that foundation to $104,100. The Consortium will use the funds to address a variety of new initiatives that were addressed in a recent survey of jazz musicians, jazz educators and jazz fans. The initiatives are addressed in more detail here and include:
- Hiring of a part-time Program Coordinator, most likely a local jazz musician, to guide the planning and implementation of feasible new programs that, taken together, will make a discernable impact on the climate for working jazz musicians.
- Identifying and establishing new jazz venues. These include house concerts, the Bartell Theater, and the new special event space in the Downtown branch of the Madison Public Library.
- GMJC will work with the Madison school district’s Fine Arts Division and new advisory teams of teachers and musicians to design and pilot a program that brings professional musicians into area schools to help music teachers enrich the quality of jazz education. This program may include artist residencies, teacher mentoring, performances with student ensembles, etc.
- Peterson grant funding will support a Professional Development Day program for K-12 music teachers, delivered in partnership with the Jazz Institute of Chicago (JIC) and hosted by the Madison school district’s Fine Arts Division with assistance from the UW School of Music and the Wisconsin Music Educators Association.
- Peterson grant funding will provide partial support for the third annual Madison High School Jazz Festival and will also provide support for Madison Jazz Jam to continue increasing attendance and participation of young emerging jazz musicians at their twice-monthly sessions, where amateur musicians develop their craft by performing with local professionals and receiving instructional feedback from an outstanding local jazz educator.
- Local nonprofits that serve young people and our communities of color – the Boys & Girls Club, East Madison and Goodman Community Centers, Centro Hispano, etc. – already offer programs in the performing arts and other areas of cultural enrichment, and several have already demonstrated an interest in collaborating with the jazz community on activities such as outreach programs featuring nationally-recognized jazz artists of color. The new Peterson grant will enable GMJC to hire a part-time Program Coordinator to direct development and implementation of a pilot program that integrates jazz into the menu of cultural programs offered by one or more of these kinds of nonprofits. The new grant will also provide seed funding for program start-up.
- The Consortium will work with Greater Madison’s major jazz calendar providers – esp. Madison Jazz Blog (http://madisonjazz.wordpress.com/), WORT-FM, and Isthmus – and its own partner organizations to determine the feasibility of a single information source that enables fans to get accurate and timely information about upcoming jazz community events, and a system for making this information easily accessible.
The Greater Madison Jazz Consortium was founded in 2012 on the strength of the first Peterson Foundation grant. It is a partnership of nonprofit presenting organizations (Madison Music Collective, Wisconsin Union Theater, Madison Jazz Society, and Midwest Gypsy Swing Festival), educators (UW School of Music, Madison Metropolitan School District Fine Arts Office, and Madison Jazz Jam), and WORT-FM, with additional support from the Jazz Institute of Chicago and local media (Isthmus and Capital City Hues). The partners’ common goals have been identified as:
Expanding and diversifying the local audience for jazz,
• Deepening audience understanding and appreciation of the music,
• Cultivating the next generation of jazz musicians and appreciators,
• Increasing performance opportunities for local jazz musicians, and
• Increasing the capacity of local jazz presenters to book higher-profile performing artists.
