Letter From The Director

ENCORE!

It has been maximally refreshing to see so many eager faces at this year’s Earshot Jazz Festival and to feel so many grateful spirits engaging with the nourishing dynamics of live creative music. We’ve all been on an unfolding journey through serious times together, but each life has a story to tell. So, too, the experience of being in the presence of live music with others is both communal and personal. The incredible depth and diversity of which jazz embodies feels like the perfect healing tonic for this moment.  

We’re grateful to be here in Seattle; not only for its commitment to arts and culture, but for its exemplary dedication to advancing COVID safety protocols. Without exception, audience members have been respectful of each other, and happy to participate in vaccination, masking, and safety check-ins at events. And we’re so grateful to our community partners; Langston Seattle, Town Hall, Royal Room, the Chapel, and so many others. 

Our work here is to celebrate and support jazz in Seattle, in service to our audiences, artists, students, and educators. That work includes the presentation of artists from around the world, and around the Seattle region, who make jazz what it is today. The annual Earshot festival frequently gains national press attention and participates in national jazz-support initiatives. Through an active schedule of concerts, our monthly magazine (now fully archived), and expansive community engagement activities, the Earshot organization shines a positive light on the entirety of Seattle’s jazz scene to the rest of the world. 

Those very lights, the entirety of Seattle’s incredible jazz scene, are coming back onto the stage for more music. 

Seattle’s finest jazz room, Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley, is going strong with a full schedule of shows. Thomas Marriott’s new Seattle Jazz Fellowship is christening a weekly series at Vermillion on Capitol Hill Wednesday evenings. The cozy new restaurant and jazz venue Calluna is open and presenting live jazz. The Royal Room in Columbia City has reopened with a regular schedule that includes a new Monday night jam session. And, speaking of jam sessions, Mo’Jam Mondays are back at the Nectar Lounge, the Tuesday sessions at the Owl ‘n Thistle Tuesday are going strong, and the Racer Sessions are back on the first and third Sundays, in a shiny new Café Racer on Capitol Hill. 

New and exciting jazz programming is emerging each month. Check our Jazz Around the Sound calendar in this issue for jazz happenings throughout November. And, as always, find up-to-date information at earshot.org.

Support live jazz! See you soon.

–JOHN GILBREATH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR