I missed last Thursday's workshop because I was out of town at the week-long Tritone Jazz Camp in Door County WI, so I have no report about the Thursday session. Hopefully someone who was there will be able to mention what happened.
In other news:
While I was at Tritone, Sam Fiske called on the morning on Thursday to talk about the schedule for the Freedom Jazz Festival, our time slots and to begin roughing out a set list. Then about fifteen hours later he forwarded the announcement that the FJF was cancelled for this year. Unfortunately funding and person-power concerns resulted in the organizers not being able to go forward with the festival. This is quite a loss for the local jazz community because the FJF features local jazz musicians. The Jazz Workshop and the FJF are closely related, both having been started by Sam Favors; Sam's wife, Annie, carries on his legacy with the Jazz Workshop and a dedicated core of people carry on the FJF. Here's hoping that funding can be secured for 2011!
Speaking of Annie, we're hoping that she is back on her feet and up to full speed soon!
The Jazz Workshop is a unique opportunity for people of all ages to develop their jazz abilities. This was brought home to me this week at Tritone, studying with 40+ other jazz musicians of varying ability and experience and a crackerjack faculty. A lot of my fellow campers have little or no opportunity to play jazz except at things like jazz camps- there are few community resources for exploring this music in most cities. Thanks to the vision of Sam Favors, here in the Twin Cities we can play jazz every week with like-minded folks. After talking with a number of the campers about this, there may be jazz workshops springing up around the country based on Sam's idea.
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