REFLECTIONS ON A DECADE

We got faster
Things got cheaper
Living became more expensive
We got connected (internet access more than doubled in the US)
We became less personal (electronic "friends" become normal)
We stopped writing
We started emailing (daily emails worldwide increased from 6 billion a day to 40 billion a day)
We stopped watching network TV
We started making our own videos (one third of all homes in the US now have digital video recorders)
We used to watch "ER" (the top TV show in 1999)
Now we watch "American Idol" (the top TWO TV shows in 2009)
TV became "Reality"
Music became "Free"
Movies became three-dimensional
Life became two-dimensional
The idea of "unplugging" became old-fashioned
Cellphone reception became a God-given right
Britney Spears did NOT go away.
We stopped following trends
We became our own trend
We became more "secure"
We became more nervous
Capitalism won the war
Capitalism lost its way
We made more children
We made less jobs
We became more unified
We became more divided
We elected a man who gave us Hope
We continue to Hope
I continue to Hope

(statistics c/o "The Decade" - Wall Street Journal 12/21/2009)

Join the California Jazz Foundation

'I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.'
- Groucho Marx

This may be true for Groucho, but I have finally found a home on the Board of the Califonia Jazz Foundation.

The California Jazz Foundation is a nonprofit charitable organization formed to provide services and support to jazz musicians and others who have made substantial contributions to the art form.

To start the New Year right, the CJF is having a Membership Party at Vitello's in Studio City on December 10, 1 - 5 PM.

Your ticket to the show includes a one year membership to the CJF, and is fully tax deductible! Tickets are $50 - $100 per person, or just $25 for students and musicians. (You don't need to bring your axe to prove you are a musician, just show up and pay the $25.)

Besides becoming a member, you get 4 jazz bands, and lunch, to boot! WOW, WHAT A DEAL!

You can click here for more information

I hope to see you there - I will be at the table in front, welcoming people.

Do You LALA?

The availability of free music and video on the internet continues to spread. It is clear now that there is no stopping it. And as bandwidth and memory gets cheaper, the Global Free Jukebox comes closer and closer to being the way people want to hear their music. The newest trend to watch is free music streams – like Pandora and the recent addition: LALA.com. This site, recently purchased by Apple, allows you to stream and listen to whole albums for free, download and purchase the music or – and here is where it gets a bit weird: you can listen to each song or album once for free, and if you like what you hear, rather than buy and download the song, you can pay just 10 cents per song and listen to it as much as you want from their website. Confusing? It is simple to use. Go to
lala.com
type in an artist name (like George Kahn, for example), and start listening!

Jazz Leaves the Museum and enters the Old Age Home

Sad news continues to pour in for the music business in general, and jazz music in particular. I may be overly pessimistic, with the (temporary?) end of the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles, but a recent article in the Wall Street Journal made me sad. It does seem like the glorious "Long Tail" of the internet may actually become, as the brilliant Hugh MacLeod said, a Short Tail with a large Pile of Dead Bodies next to it.

In an article on August 9, Terry Teachout quoted statistics from an NEA Survey of Public Participation completed in 2008. Here is a sampling:
- In 2002 (the last survey date) 10.8% of adult Americans attended at least one jazz performance. In 2008, that number fell to 7.8%, a 28% drop in attendance.
- The median age of adults that admitted to seeing jazz was 46. In 1982 (the first year the NEA did this study) the median age was 29.
- Even amongst college-educated adults, which would seem to be the main jazz audience, the attendance has shrunk from 19.4% in 1982 to 14.9% today, a 23% loss in attendance.

These numbers show that the jazz audience is both aging and shrinking, regardless of any attempts to blend hip hop or rap or trance music into "jazz". Or perhaps people are just afraid to admit that they went to a "jazz" concert when they went to see Chris Botti or (dare I call him jazz?) Kenny G.

And as the jazz audience ages, it puts us in the exact same demographics as the other "high art" forms of classical music, ballet, opera and theater: the average age of people attending these events in 2008 was from 46-49 years old. So in a way there is more competition for a shrinking and graying audience.

So what can we do today to change this? My experience over and over again is that we need to get people exposed to the music so that they can enjoy the groove, the excitement and the personality of great live jazz music (as was proven again the other week when I played for between 500 -700 enthusiastic people at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Allowing a jazz group open for Phish or Dave Matthews might help. We need to get out of the Jazz Ghetto before it turns into an Old Age Home, and then a graveyard.

August Update

1. The next two stops for the West Coast Jazz World Tour are at the Hip Kitty in Claremont, Ca. Two very different shows:
COURTNEY LEMMON with THE GEORGE KAHN TRIO will be performing at our new favorite jazz club, The Hip Kitty in Claremont, CA on Friday August 21, from 8:00 – Midnight. No cover charge, a great bar and fondue if you are hungry. It’s a very cool scene in the Inland Empire
http://www.hipkittyjazz.com/
Then, on September 12 The George Kahn Quartet featuring Pat Kelley will be at The Hip Kitty for a Swinging Saturday Night to kick off the new school year. Prepare for an audience filled with hip kats and kittens from the Claremont colleges. For more updated info, go to the calendar at
http://georgekahn.com

2. Somewhere between 500-700 people showed up at LACMA on July 24 to see the George Kahn West Coast Jazz Quintet. It was an amazing show, with Larry Klimas on sax, Gabe Johnson on trumpet, Eric Sittner on bass, Clayton Cameron on drums, and George on piano. Here are some photos to give you a sense of the excitement. Looking forward to being back at LACMA again in 2011!
http://hemetlive.shutterfly.com/

3. I am a member of ARC (Artists Recording Collective), and this group, led by my long time friend and sax player Chris Burnett, is launching the next level of their campaign to spread the word about independent jazz artists.

If you want to see what ARC is up to, or if you are interested in becoming a member, come check it out at
http://artistsrecordingcollective.info/

4. So many cool links to check out on the internet right now
1) Someone did me one better, and put together a Google calendar of all the FREE music events in Los Angeles for the month of August: 2009 SUMMER CONCERT CALENDAR

2) If you have not heard of Hugh MacLeod yet, you owe it to yourself to visit the cartoonist and bargain philosopher at
http://gapingvoid.com
3) Here are Regina Brett’s Life Lessons (by the way, she is NOT 90 years old...)

4) And of couse there is always the end of the internet
I just bumped into this again
Thought it was funny

Jazzy Things To Do This Summer in Los Angeles

The summer schedule has been set, and there are some great FREE shows this summer:
The GEORGE KAHN WEST COAST JAZZ QUINTET will be performing at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) on Friday, July 24. We’ll be performing songs from various albums, and introducing some new material from the new album, “2010”. The music starts at 6:00 PM. But make sure you get there early, the last time we played there it was PACKED!

COURTNEY LEMMON with THE GEORGE KAHN TRIO will be performing at our new favorite jazz club, The Hip Kitty in Claremont, CA on Friday August 21, from 8:00 – Midnight. No cover charge, a great bar and fondue if you are hungry. It’s a very cool scene in the Inland Empire

In keeping with my desire to keep “with it” on the internet, I have finally uploaded some photos from the LACMA concert in 2006, as well as photos from the “LIVE IN HEMET” recording session from January. (This session will be part of the upcoming album, “2010”) You will see great photos of Courtney, MB, Karl Vincent, Justo almario, Gabe Johnson, Andy Suzuki (who sends greetings from Berlin) and others.
Enjoy!

I LOVE SUMMER, and all the music that it brings to Los Angeles. Here are a few of the events I am planning to see over the next two months:
Luba Mason at Catalina Bar And Grill on July 8
Justo Almario at Grand Performances on 7/17
Ernie Watts at Hollywood and Highland on July 21 http://www.hollywoodandhighland.com/play_events.php
The Bad Plus at Grand performances on 7/24
Four Way Free at the House of Blues on 7/29
Pancho Sanchez at Hollywood and Highland August 25