February Magazine
February 2021
Seattle Jazz Artist Relief Fund—Second Round
-Profile-
Benjamin Hunter: Standing at the Crossroads of Music and Community
-Preview-
18th Annual Biamp PDX Jazz Festival
-Meet The Board-
Masthead
February 2021
Volume 37, No. 2
Executive Director
John Gilbreath
Managing Director
Karen Caropepe
Marketing & Development Associate
Lucienne Aggarwal
Editor
Lucienne Aggarwal
Earshot Jazz Copy Editor
Caitlin Carter
Contributing Writers/Artists
Paul de Barros
Ian Gwin
Rayna Mathis
Paul Rauch
Jonathan Shipley
Calendar Editors
Carol Levin
Jane Emerson
Photography
Daniel Sheehan
Layout
Karen Caropepe
Distribution
Karen Caropepe
Dan Dubie
Earshot Jazz volunteers
Send Calendar Information to:
Add a gig to the calendar online or send us an email.
Board of Directors
Chris Icasiano (President)
Sheila Hughes (Vice President)
Chris Nutter (Secretary)
Augusto Cardoso
John W. Comerford
Maurice James
Danielle Leigh
Ruby Smith Love
Diane Wah
Emeritus Board Members
Clarence Acox
Sue Coliton
Taina Honkalehto
Hideo Makihara
Kenneth W. Masters
Peter Monaghan
Lola Pedrini
Richard Thurston
Paul Toliver
Cuong Vu
Founded in 1984 by Paul de Barros, Gary Bannister, and Allen Youngblood.
Earshot Jazz is published monthly by Earshot Jazz Society of Seattle.
Subscription (with membership): $35
3417 Fremont Ave N, #221
Seattle, WA 98103
phone / (206) 547-6763
Earshot Jazz ISSN 1077-0984
Printed by Yakima Herald-Republic
© 2020 Earshot Jazz Society of Seattle
Letter From The Director
Black History is NOW!
As we celebrate Black History Month, especially this February, it’s important to consider the word “history” in active terms. More than just a study of the past, history offers an opportunity to consider today’s realities in a larger arc with tomorrow’s possibilities. It can be a call to action. Realizing our own active role in history, we can more easily understand our responsibility to it. And with a year like 2020 still looming large in our rearview mirrors, the road ahead is equally clear. Black history is in front of us, not behind, and we all have work to do.
Jazz music is a cultural treasure of Black America. Simply put: no Black America, no jazz.
And jazz has an equally fluid relationship to history. To consider jazz as something that has already happened does it a grave disservice. Jazz history is a living history, and its deepest threads have always been about Black experience and Black innovation. Creative Black Music, Liberation Music, Black American Music (BAM), Black Arts, and what the Art Ensemble of Chicago advanced as “Great Black Music” have inspired and powered the art form through the years, in spite of cultural appropriation, white privilege, and the unbalanced power dynamics of the marketplace.
The Earshot Jazz organization is proud to have presented Seattle concerts by many of the legends of the Black avant-garde. In its early years, with the artistic vision of co-founder Gary Bannister, Earshot stepped right in with concerts by Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Sun Ra, Michele Rosewoman, Bobby Hutcherson, Butch Morris, James Blood Ulmer, Don Pullen, Jimmy McGriff, Horace Tapscott, Andrew Hill, Henry Threadgill, and the World Saxophone Quartet, among others.
Over the ensuing years, Earshot has offered Seattle stages to vanguard artists like the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ornette Coleman, William Parker, David S. Ware, Sam Rivers, Pharoah Sanders, Amina Claudine Myers, Dewey Redman, Steve Coleman, Billy Bang, Wayne Shorter, David Murray, Kahil El’Zabar, Carmen Lundy, and Wadada Leo Smith. Earshot has presented artists close to the African diaspora, such as Abdullah Ibrahim, Randy Weston, Somi, Bheki Mseleku, Omar Sosa, and Hugh Masekela, as well as jazz poets Amiri Baraka, James McBride, Ishmael Reed, Paul Harding, and Kamau Daáood.
Earshot continues its commitment to creative Black arts by presenting forward-looking artists of the movement, often for their first time in Seattle, like Jason Moran, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Darius Jones, Marquis Hill, Burnt Sugar, Nicole Mitchell, Matthew Shipp, Jazzmeia Horn, Joel Ross, Makaya McCraven, Brandee Younger, Ambrose Akinmusire, Craig Taborn, and many others. As always, we invite your suggestions and support. Now, more than ever.
Finally, and I think bears repeating: Happy New Year! We have a long way to go, to be sure, but it finally feels as if we’re unstuck, and at least inching it forward. Congratulations! Let us know how we can help.
Be safe out there.
– JOHN GILBREATH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR