San Jose Jazz announces a new weekly series, ‘Live From Home,’ to help musicians affected by the cancellations of tours and live performances, due to COVID-19 quarantines sweeping the world.
The experimental series launches this week with 30-40 minute concerts live-streamed via San Jose Jazz’s digital platforms through Facebook Live, every Monday and Thursday evenings at 7pm PST (times may vary per stream).
Artists will perform three songs and answer questions live from the online audience. A donation link will be set up for each live stream with 100% of proceeds directly benefiting the artists.
The first round of artists include Bay Area native and vocalist Jackie Gage on Thursday, March 26, pianist/emcee Bennett Roth-Newell on Monday, March 30, and vocalist Shayna Steele on Thursday, April 2.
“We are very fortunate to have an audience base that really enjoys exploring new music,” said SJZ Executive Director Brendan Rawson. “The Live at Home series creates an of-the-moment opportunity to connect some of the great artists we work with directly to our audiences in their own homes for a very immediate performance experiences. We hope that we can be a conduit for people to directly support the hard working musicians that bring us such great joy throughout the year.”
Founded in 1986, San Jose Jazz is a public benefit corporation celebrating jazz as a dynamic, evolving art form. As producer of the annual San Jose Jazz Summer Fest and Winter Fest, it has presented more than 4,000 artists on its summer and winter festival stages and other venues throughout the South Bay Area.
With its innovative year-round music and educational programming. San Jose Jazz preserves the jazz tradition while actively supporting the next generation of performers within the genre and beyond.
SJZ Marketing Director and series curator Massimo Chisessi said: “The current ‘shelter-in-place’ orders brought about by the spread of the novel coronavirus have presented many challenges to touring artists. As they are bringing their incredible music to online communities more than ever right now, we want to support these efforts by having select artists perform specialized content for our audiences. The new live-streamed series allows us to reconnect with some of the 4,000+ artists we’ve presented over the last three decades.”
Detailed artist information for the launch of the Live From Home series is listed below, and more info is available at https://sanjosejazz.org/events
Photo Credit: Walter Wagner
San Jose Jazz (Facebook)