What a festival! We’ve blazed a trail across the past couple of weeks with creative, compelling music, celebrating an art form that remains, as Duke Ellington once said, “beyond category.” Top Seattle artists have joined national and international visitors to engage grateful audiences in unforgettable, one-of-a-kind concert experiences night after night. This festival has been a welcome balm for these turbulent times.
Duke Ellington also said, “Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom… In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz has evolved.” And though the words “freedom, “independence,” and even the word “jazz,” have developed much more complex meanings now than they may have had in Ellington’s day, the message still resonates.
The word “jazz” means many things to many people, and that’s the good news! Jazz can accommodate all those definitions, and many more yet to come. But rather than worry about the semantics, we choose to get the music, and the musicians, onto Seattle stages and let people draw their own conclusions.
One of the things we’re most proud of in our legacy of service to the art form is how Earshot has provided not just a platform but cultural amplification for emerging artists. Through the festival’s history, Earshot has identified and presented the first Seattle appearances of young artists like Joshua Redman, Robert Glasper, Vijay Iyer, Myra Melford, Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey, Ambrose Akinmusire, and many others who have gone on to establish themselves internationally as leaders in the music.
Another point that this festival has made year after year, is that Seattle resident artists are some of the best in the world, absolutely deserving to be on major jazz festival stages. We’ve embraced this work as our civic and cultural responsibility.
We are endlessly grateful to the support this community has given us. Building on this legacy, the Earshot Jazz organization remains in fluid motion toward a bright and productive future. The Earshot board of directors has been hard at work crafting an executive succession that carefully supports the creative path forward.
And why not think big?! Let’s build a permanent home for the Earshot organization and another stage for jazz in Seattle! Let’s commission more work from Seattle’s artists! Let’s bring real jazz groups into area schools to share the excitement of live jazz. Let’s endow a program that honors the life work of area artists with financial awards. Let’s provide more stages for young artists to build chops between educational and real-world experience.
We invite you to join us, with your ideas and your financial support as we move upward and onward in the living spirit of jazz.
Thank you.
—John Gilbreath, Executive Director
