The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra's 20th Anniversary Season started with a bang with what has been my favorite concert during my time with the band: The Horn featuring Sean Jones. It was so inspiring to be around such a masterful player and educator. His words and notes certainly gave us all something to draw upon, think about, and take with us - something all great music can do! The Horn ft. Sean Jones Photographs by Nicole Bissey Along with reveling in Sean’s visit, we also just played a beautiful concert with the New York Voices at The Folly Theater last Friday, October 14th. The “Grand Lady ..read more

For 20 years, the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra has been in existence, and that’s pretty incredible. If you think about things that have come and gone during that time period, it puts things in perspective: Facebook and YouTube were launched in 2004 and 2005, respectively The iPhone came out in 2007 When the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra started, it would be another 8 years before the Kansas City Wizards would become Sporting Kansas City, Patrick Mahomes was attending elementary school, Zack Greinke was still in the minor leagues, and the careers of Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Drake, and Adele hadn ..read more

In the 1920s, Kansas City brought about a few developments that would eventually change the landscape of popular music in the world, including jazz, rock and roll, and beyond. KC was a veritable melting pot of culture, and a landing spot for many great musicians who would contribute to the communal, ever-refining texture of jazz. In 1917, Chicagoan Dave Lewis moved to Kansas City and created the “Jazz Boys,” a 7 piece group that gained popularity playing dances at the McHugh Dancing Academy located at 15th and Troost. The group featured some legendary musicians from Lincoln High School, inclu ..read more

Last month, KCJO successfully launched a new educational offering entitled Jazz Café as a part of our education program, JazzWorks. Jazz Café brings in a live combo formed by KCJO members over a school’s lunch hour at no cost. The program, a vision of Executive Director Lea Petrie, is designed to help foster the next generation’s appreciation of jazz through a fun, immersive, and of course, educational listening experience, without detracting from any class time. The first Jazz Café program took place at the Ewing Marion Kauffman High School on March 16, reaching over 300 students. “Kids and ..read more

“Onward and upward.” This is something the great Bobby Watson used to say when leaving a conversation or a rehearsal. The mindset of “wherever we are, let’s strive to move beyond that to something greater” has always stuck with me from my days as a graduate student under Professor Watson’s tutelage - that we have to first acknowledge where we currently are, and then focus on what’s next. This is the mindset of The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, and what we’re looking at in the months to come, thankfully, reflects a clear path forward. Firstly, we have a beautiful concert programmed on Saturday ..read more

Photographs by Clint Ashlock An increasingly important component of The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra is our dedication to educational outreach. Through masterclasses, clinics, workshops, online content, and much more, we are striving to bring our community knowledge and appreciation of jazz to a steadily higher level. Reflecting on the events from October 5-8, we see this dedication made manifest through the efforts of our musicians and guest artists Jaleel Shaw and Bobby Watson. Any time the KCJO can present music that holds an essential position in jazz history is a special occasion, and our c ..read more

Photographs by Suzanne Frisse One of the things about jazz that has always deeply moved me is the heritage; the cultural inheritance passed down through the voices of our musical ancestors. When we listen to Louis Armstrong, we hear the soul and freedom he felt pouring into his horn and voice. We can better understand human experience, the combination of tragedy, pain, joy and love, when we listen to Billie Holiday sing. The sense of searching and spirit in John Coltrane, and so on. Charlie Parker’s legacy is woven into that tapestry in a very significant sense, and to spend the past several w ..read more

By nature, I’m a pretty effusive person. I enjoy seeing positivity in the world, and I like expressing my reaction to it verbally. Usually accompanying effusiveness is a predilection for hyperbole (which if you’ve ever been to a KCJO concert you’ve heard that action), and I’m never one to shy away from overstating something that doesn’t even need to be overstated. That said, it doesn’t feel right to be overly floral in describing how good it feels to look forward to taking the stage this fall with the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra, after a year plus on hiatus. There has been so much intensity of ..read more

I never rooted for Kobe Bryant, but of all the athletes I’ve watched over the years no one has influenced my philosophy as a musician and artistic person more. It’s been a year since he and eight others died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, and I’ve spent a lot of time reading and hearing his words and philosophies. What he believed and worked toward was very much akin to the “jazz philosophy” I’ve spent my adult life contemplating and attempting to align myself with. A quick intro - I love basketball. It was probably my first love, besides dinosaurs. As a kid, my favorite team ..read more

Bobby Watson would tell his students at UMKC about “the jazz way” of things. He’d relate proverbs from the legendary Art Blakey, like “jazz is faith in action,” and imbue our young minds with his own maxims that allowed us to see how the unique skill of jazz improvisation would help us move forward, in a positive direction, in all aspects of life. I’ve leaned on - relied on - that worldview nearly every day in this challenging year of 2020. It’s also with that philosophy that the KCJO has grown as an organization this year, despite so many adversities. First, I’d like to go a little further i ..read more