Holidays already here. End of 2024. Can you believe it? (Have you created and if a JJA posted your best of year list? The Jazz Journalists Association is proud of 240 active professional and associate members spread across the wold, working in diverse media — 87 of them with work in The Jazz Omnibus: 21st Century Photos and Writings by Members of The Jazz Journalists Association (from Cymbal Press, Oct 15 2024). We produce The Buzz podcast and Seeing Jazz Photography Master Classes, frequent new posts at JJANews as well as on Facebook and now Bluesky, celebration annually of Jazz ..read more

The ghost of George Wein dropped by and mingled with jazzmen of Belgrade the last weekend of October (as usual). The occasion was the Belgrade Jazz Festival, in Serbia, southeastern Europe. A member of the Europe Jazz Network, the BJF had celebrated its 40th edition, 20th since its post-civil war renewal and tenth Serbian Showcase. As written in “Belgrade Jazz Festival 1971-2020” by Vojislav Voja Pantic, the BJF’s artistic director, jazz journalist, promoter, educator and mathematician, the seed of jazz was planted back in 1958 by producer George Wein and U.S. State Department. The test of the ..read more

A new Romanian film documents the man behind invaluable, Quixotic Leo Records, and reunited the author with Leo Feigin after 30 years. In 2019 Ioana Grigore, a student at Bucharest’s Theatre and Film University, made her debut with a one-hour film titled Creativ. It was a documentary about the eponymous band, which had established itself as the main landmark of Romania’s jazz avant-garde during the terminal decade of the country’s post-war totalitarian regime. Persevering for five years in the direction initiated by Creativ, Grigore has just premiered her second cinematographic-music ..read more

Vilma Dobilaitė  Visionary trumpeter Theo Croker, grandson of the legendary trumpet master Doc Cheatham, inaugurated the 44th Granada Jazz Festival with a breath of fresh air. By featuring his quartet the festival — directed by Mariche Huertas de la Cámara, and one of the most renown in Europe — continues to stand at the vanguard, presenting a range of styles. This festival was first held in 1980. Since then it has hosted great names from the history of jazz, both Spanish and international: Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Charlie Haden, Art Blakey, Tete Montoliu, Dizzy Gillespie, Eliane ..read more

I found myself in London, England after many years of desiring a return after spending time there on tour as a musician during the first Trump election (it is quite possible I am subconsciously deterred from election drama). COVID-19 and the unfortunate loss of my passport in 2021 had posted in the States, feeling a bit listless as many of my friends did not tour and travel through my hometown of Baltimore. Even compared to New York City — saturated with the most brilliant jazz performances and home to many of of my favorite artists — London has seemed to ..read more

The Buzz: The JJA Podcast, has returned after a three month hiatus with an interview offering backstory of The Jazz Omnibus: 21st Century Photos and Writings by Members of the Jazz Journalists Association. Host Lawrence Peryer, the Buzz’s newly appointed managing editor, speaks with the Omnibus‘s editor David Adler, copy chief Terri Hinte, editorial advisor Howard Mandel and Cymbal Press publisher Gary S. Stager about the anthology that presents expert coverage of jazz and jazz-adjacent topics from the two decades since the JJA’s incorporation as a 501 (c) 3. The book’s editorial team explains ..read more

I am one of the writers represented in The Jazz Omnibus, a newly released compendium of articles and photographs by members of the Jazz Journalists Association. The piece I submitted, on Houston drummer Kendrick Scott, was originally published in 2023 in the program notes for the DACAMERA of Houston jazz series. The piece also appears my new self-published book Jazz In the New Millennium: Live and Well, Revised Edition, an expanded edition of a book I published in 2014 collecting interviews I have done with prominent jazz artists active in the 21st Century. Here’s how and why I am doing ..read more

Isn’t now — early autumn — when the new year begins? Semester starts, harvest time, holidays ahead . . .and a new arts season, with performance series, record releases, major projects mounted? JJA members are all up on that — as you see from what we’re covering, below. New Members include Hilary Seabrook in the U.K. the podcaster behind Harmonious World since 2020, and as an associate member Lisa Hilton, pianist-composer in Malibu, California, promoting her most recent album, Coincidental Moment. Welcome to you both. Please send updates in the future to join the company on page 2 —->>> ..read more

Announcing The Jazz Omnibus: 21st-Century Photos and Writings by Members of the Jazz Journalists Association, a unique anthology to be published in ebook and print-on-demand paperback and hardcover editions on October 15 by Cymbal Press. A team effort featuring 90 contributors, compiled by editor David Adler, photography editor Patrick Hinely, copy chief Terri Hinte and editorial consultant Howard Mandel with Fiona Ross and Martin Johnson as submission readers, The Jazz Omnibus is dedicated to the memory of jazz scholar and chronicler Dan Morgenstern (1929-2024). The 600-page volume features 6 ..read more

The JJA celebrates the life and works of Dan Morgenstern, whose love and comprehension of jazz resulted in decades of documentation, commentary and standards-setting for journalists, scholars, musicians and all members of the international community of jazz. Morgenstern is especially noted for stewardship of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, for his books Jazz People and Living with Jazz, for most productively editing DownBeat from 1967-73, for his many personal friendships with the earliest and greatest of jazz musicians, and for enormous, unquantifiable behind-the-scenes s ..read more