This is a copy and paste from my facebook post.

They all book 200 shows per year that are the same swing-adjacent college “bands” or throw it behind extravagant bars, booze, and mediocre food where it’s then objectified and seen as a gimmick. It’s fascinating to me that Jazz musicians romanticize and make their major life goals to play at select warehouses and dive bars and proceed to idolize or dehumanize their own colleagues that are really no different.

Venues need to get with it and start pinpointing a younger market by pushing themes and concepts that bring people in who aren’t ALREADY into jazz. To no fault of its own, most jazz audiences are either very elderly or students giving huge sums of money to “jazz schools” many of whom will gain huge egos the second they get booked at one of the aforementioned dive bars or warehouses that wouldn’t dare pay them for their time or service.

We need to start thinking outside the box as an artistic community, working together with, rather than FOR the spaces we play at. There’s already an underlying community at any successful venue and If you’re wondering why you can’t or haven’t played somewhere, consider participating in that community rather than shooting a blind email, cold calling or relying on your reputation as a niche micro celebrity.

None of this is meant to discourage but rather to motivate people to find their own, new spaces to play where they’re heard, appreciated and have a chance to inspire normal human beings to listen to jazz.

Im incredibly grateful every day to be able to perform and participate at community oriented venues that are forward-minded, courteous and value supporting musicians.

As a follow up to this post (originally on facebook) Dr. Paul Austerlitz asked me the question “So, I’m curious about what you see as a road to the future, Jasper; what do you mean by “participating in that community” to support the venues?”

I think this is a good question, to which I certainly don’t have the full answer to but here is a few more thoughts on the matter;

I guess my main thought is that we need to begin working with venues outside of our comfort zone collaboratively to create and curate NEW spaces for the music to be performed rather than seeing the venues as our sources of "employment." Conversely, venues need to modernize their approach to marketing either by way of diversifying their programmed performances to more than just modern, traditional, or straight ahead jazz. The elitism within these very resemblant sub-genres don't help us out one bit. That said, I'd also argue that a venue specifically dedicated to only booking vocal jazz or something as specialized as "trombonist led groups" could also do well. A random example of this being realized could be if a club decided to specialize each evening in a different instrument or theme like tuesday trombonist night, or free music fridays (just two random ideas lol).

As far as "community participation" goes, I think it's important that aspiring performers/musicians know how important being a part of each venue's "hang" is. As someone who books bands for Videogame Music/Jazz events, I am always gonna be way more likely to book someone who has come to other events within the VGM community I've seen before and regularly hangs out at the spaces they want to perform at rather than some artist who cold calls or emails me. This is also how most successful jazz clubs and performance venues operate and I think that's good because it encourages people to go support the places. It seems intuitive to me that I'd at least go check a venue before deciding I'd want to play there but to many, due to seeking some status, that's not the case.

I suppose my summary to all this would be to encourage musicians to find venues that creatively inspires them (especially if music isn't already played there) and tailor/curate music specifically for those spaces and try to begin a mutualistic relationship that will benefit both the performer and the venue as a collective rather than a "employer/employee" model because even though that's difficult, I think it's much more likely to be successful and sustainable long term, than trying to play at the same 3 clubs for $100 for the next 40 years haha.

To be clear I think several venues in NY do it really well like Ornithology which is already doing things to bring people in like having themed nights (like the bari sax night) or specifically booking a great balance of younger musicians within its own community. I also think The Jazz Gallery does this well and even smalls to a degree (with the late night session being so widely known). Other venues like Blue note, Vanguard or Birdland do well because they're marketed as international hubs for jazz that see a hugely tourist-based audience which I also think is good for the genre as a whole, but a less realistic template for both up-and-coming musicians and venues alike to follow.