(CelebrityAccess MediaWire0 –MCG Jazz and Jazz Alliance International are presenting the first ever Jazz Conference, Eaising Market Share for Jazz, to be held at the Frank Lloyd Home Wingspread in Racine, WI on May 24-26. Thirty-five attendees will gather to discuss opportunities and strategies to bring jazz music to a wider audience and enhance the brand of jazz. Over 450 years of jazz industry experience and 250 years of business development experience‹together for the first time will be represented at the conference.
"This gathering will be of particular significance to the field," says Bruce Lundvall, CEO of Blue Note Records and chairman of Jazz Alliance International (JAI). "We hope to achieve a common purpose and understanding of jazz beyond the music as a brand, life experience and economic engine."
"Elements of jazz are present in many aspects of life," says president and CEO of the Pittsburgh non-profit Arts and Training Center, Bill Strickland . "Jazz music celebrates the human spirit and represents hope in its purest form. There is no question in my mind that jazz is part of the answer to the spiritual cancer that has infected society."
"Never before has there been a time in the United States that the jazz Industry was positioned with the needed critical mass to work together on behalf of the cultural institution of jazz," adds NEA Jazz Master and renown jazz educator Dr. Billy Taylor.
Raising Market Share for Jazz is sponsored by MCG Jazz, Jazz Alliance International, The Johnson Foundation, Alcoa Foundation, Ford Foundation, and International Association for Jazz Education. –Bob Grossweiner and Jane Cohen
