Jazz: The Second Century Series

Seeking submissions! Earshot Jazz seeks submissions from Seattle-area individual artists and ensembles for the 2019 Jazz: The Second Century series. The series brings the progression of jazz into creative motion on the concert stage. Projects that question and expand the conventions of the jazz form are welcome.

Seattle-area individual artists or groups, in any instrument combination, are eligible. Submissions must include a recorded sample of a project that can be performed in a concert setting. We encourage applicants to include a letter that speaks to their musical interpretation of the meaning of jazz and of the next stage of jazz music.

Individual artists or ensembles are selected by a blind-jury process. Second Century artists and ensembles perform during July 2018, and are paid a competitive fee for the performance.

Please send submissions electronically to 2ndcentury@earshot.org or by mail to Earshot Jazz, 3429 Fremont Place N, #309, Seattle, WA 98103. The application cycle for 2019 is now closed. Please check back in early 2020 to submit to the 2020 series.

This series – presenting Seattle artists, selected by a peer panel, performing original work in a concert setting – is a continuation of the very first programming initiative of the Earshot Jazz organization, and embodies one of our core values. Earshot’s first concert series, New Jazz/New City, was mounted in the New City Theater, now the Richard Hugo House, on Capitol Hill in 1986. The series has continued each year since: as New Jazz/New City, the Earshot Spring Series, Voice and Vision, and now Jazz: The Second Century.

From the core of this series – a question about the expansion of conventions of jazz – one might expect a tendency to grandiose re-invention. Instead, the series is a current, subtle, perhaps refreshing, un-sentimental look at our Emerald City’s engagement with this diffuse, vibrant art form.

Thanks again to our panelists, who helped curate these concerts, and to audience members who support them.