The Mellon Foundation today announced over $6.5 million in grants dedicated to expanding jazz scholarship and strengthening its cultural infrastructure as part of the Foundation’s $35M commitment to preserving America’s first original art form.
At the center of this latest round of funding for Mellon’s jazz initiative is a $5.8 million grant to support the work the Jazz Study Group (JSG)—an interdisciplinary collective of scholars, artists, and musicians that has transformed jazz scholarship over three decades. Mellon is also announcing additional support for three community-based institutions that play vital roles in sustaining jazz artistry, education, and community engagement nationwide—the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and Jazz Institute of Chicago, and The World Stage in Los Angeles.
“This suite of grants builds on decades of focused and groundbreaking work by artists, scholars, and generational leaders rooted deeply in our jazz traditions,” said Mellon President Elizabeth Alexander. “We honor the essential histories and legacies they will continue to illuminate, spurring further innovation and exploration of this quintessentially American art form.”
Founded in 1995 by distinguished jazz scholar Robert G. O’Meally, JSG is a collective comprising more than 30 US-based and international members who convene annually to explore interdisciplinary approaches to studying jazz. JSG’s community has included prolific jazz musicians, thinkers and scholars such as Amiri Baraka (writer and scholar), Albert Murray (literary critic and novelist), Max Roach (drummer and composer), Abbey Lincoln (vocalist and songwriter), Randy Weston (pianist and composer), and Geri Allen (pianist and composer) among others.
Over three decades, JSG has served as an incubator for seminal jazz biographies, oral histories, cultural criticism, and compositions, resulting in more than 25 publications and compositions created in collaboration with a host of renowned artists and scholars. Select titles born of this collective include: Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination (Brent Hayes Edwards); Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins (Aidan Levy); Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (John Szwed); Jammin’ at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema (Krin Gabbard); and Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever (Farah J. Griffin and Salim Washington); among many others.
With Mellon’s support and fiscal sponsorship from the Jazz Foundation of America, the Jazz Study Group will launch the Jazz Generations Initiative, co-designed by O’Meally in New York and pianist/composer, Courtney Bryan in New Orleans, to foster intergenerational dialogue and preserve jazz heritage – partially through oral history interviews conducted with celebrated jazz elders. The initiative will produce JSG’s second anthology of essays and jazz historiography – Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, Vol. 2 (a follow up to the 2004 volume); work to make its rich collection of archival materials publicly accessible; and also establish Bamboula: Jazz Studies in Motion – a residency program to be based in New Orleans. Across both New York and New Orleans, the initiative will also partner with artist-run nonprofits and institutions through the Jazz Community Initiative, centering jazz artistry and scholarship within the communities that sustain the music.
“Jazz has always been about connection—between disciplines, between generations, between communities,” said Robert O’Meally, founder of the Jazz Study Group. “With the Jazz Generations Initiative, co-led by composer Courtney Bryan and myself in partnership with the Mellon Foundation, we are creating a bridge between New York and New Orleans—a living network where artists and scholars can listen, learn, and carry forward the transformative stories and sounds of this music.”
In addition to supporting work of JSG, Mellon is also announcing nearly $1M in support for essential regional organizations, including:
By investing in research, storytelling, and operating support for key regional hubs, this initiative preserves the histories of jazz while sustaining the communities and traditions that keep the art form thriving for future generations.
To stay informed about additional funding within Mellon’s Jazz Initiative, subscribe to the Mellon Foundation newsletter at mellon.org/newsletter.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive.