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Interviews

A chat with Sunny Sumter, DC Jazz Festival executive director and ‘Jazz Hero’

As the longtime executive director of the DC Jazz Festival, Sunny Sumter has guided the festival through over a decade of growth, turning it into one of the country’s leading music festivals. That was already a hefty task. But this year, her job got even more complicated when the coronavirus pandemic struck. Since March, Sumter […]

September 24, 2020 0

News

The DC JazzFest returns this weekend in digital form

In a normal year, the DC Jazz Festival hosts hundreds of talented artists in performances at venues around the District for over a week in June. The pandemic prevented the festival from taking place as usual this year, but its organizers have put together a five-day virtual version that will begin on Thursday and run […]

September 23, 2020 0

News

Live jazz, socially distanced? Ghostline DC, a new ‘restaurant collective,’ thinks it can be done

A newly opened space in Glover Park is trying out an innovative model for restaurants operating amid the coronavirus pandemic. In the process, it might open up a path forward for live jazz at a time when the future of the music is threatened in D.C. and around the country. Ghostline DC, a so-called restaurant […]

September 16, 2020 0

Features

With government aid tied up, struggling jazz venue owners ponder their options

In early spring, when the coronavirus pandemic’s drastic impacts were still sinking in, many on the D.C. jazz scene held onto the faint hope that our city’s musicians might return to the stages of Twins, Sotto and the Kennedy Center by the end of the year. Six months later, nearly 200,000 Americans have died from […]

September 11, 2020 0

Save D.C. Venues: The Music Venue Relief Act

Join our coalition of musicians, organizers and advocates calling on the city to step in before we lose more beloved venues. —> TAKE ACTION NOW <— FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 3, 2020 Contact: Chris Naoum; Aaron L. Myers II WASHINGTON, DC — A coalition of DC musicians and music advocates launched a grassroots campaign this […]

September 4, 2020 0

News

Twins Jazz, a U Street institution, closes permanently

Twins Jazz, a vibrant supper club that has served for two decades as a cornerstone of the U Street scene, will permanently close, its owners announced Thursday in a statement posted to its website. Twins is the latest in a string of establishments felled by the coronavirus pandemic, which since March has left music venues […]

August 27, 2020 0

Videos

Watch Steve Arnold and Sea Change perform ‘Wide Eyed’ at the Spotlight Residency

True to the group’s title, the emotional tone of a Sea Change set moves in tides, or waves — from sunlit optimism in one song to a dark, pensive moodiness in another. But wide as that contrast might be, Arnold’s compositions are all distinctively his own. They seem to come from a particular headspace: one […]

August 6, 2020 0

News

D.C. jazz musicians march against homophobia in the community

Saxophonist Elijah Jamal Balbed convened a demonstration earlier this month in support of D.C.’s LGBTQ+ musicians, responding to the ongoing trend of homophobic speech within the community. Below are some photos from the march, which took place downtown on July 2, as well as accounts by Balbed and two other musicians, vocalist Aaron L. Myers […]

July 20, 2020 0

Announcing...

Introducing: Freedom Summer Sessions, a series of digital concerts and conversations with D.C. artists

We find ourselves at a crossroads in the centuries-long struggle against racism and the state-sanctioned brutalizing of Black lives. For the jazz community, the activist energy feeding this moment is nothing new, but it certainly has been renewed. And that’s doubly true here in D.C. — which is both the nation’s capital and an important cultural […]

July 14, 2020 3

Features

For Vernard Gray, supporting jazz meant strengthening his community in Southeast D.C.

For over 50 years, Vernard R. Gray served as a pillar of D.C.’s cultural landscape: organizing art exhibitions, presenting jazz, taking photographs, mentoring young people. He would have turned 79 years old this week, but up until the moment he died, this past January, he was working ceaselessly to expand opportunities and visibility for artists […]

July 10, 2020 0