Jazz in the Global Imagination

Conference:
Jazz in the Global Imagination
Music, Journalism, and Culture
Columbia School of Journalism
2950 Broadway (at 116th Street)
9:00 am – 6 pm, with an evening panel at 7:30 pm.

The Jazz Journalists Association is pleased to announce its participation in “Jazz in the Global Imagination: Music, Journalism, and Culture,” an international conference of jazz journalists presented by Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies, 9 a.m. to
9 p.m. on Saturday, September 29, 2007, in the Lecture Hall of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism 2950 Broadway (at 116th St.) in New York City. The main event is free and open to the public.

The conference – first ever in the United States to gather senior, mid-career and emerging jazz-oriented media professionals from around the world in discussions of topics focused on globalization and new technologies – includes six panel discussions as well as a JJA reception (invitees only) on Friday, September 28 and a send-off brunch Sunday, September 30. The JJA also will hold a real- time, globally interactive blog from and about the conference, and is currently investigating webcasts of the panels.

Thirty-two jazz journalists from Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Sweden and Turkey besides the United States will speak in the moderated 90-minute sessions on “The Global and the Local,” “Systems of Production and Consumption,”
“Globalizing the Personal,” “New Music, New Aesthetics,” “Journalism and History,” and “Jazz in the Global Imaginary,” The conference is curated by George E. Lewis, Edwin H. Case professor of music at Columbia University director of the Center for Jazz Studies, in close consultation with JJA president Howard Mandel. Mandel is author of Miles, Ornette, Cecil – Jazz Beyond Jazz, to be published this fall by Routledge, adjunct faculty at New York University and a blogger (http:// www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz; Lewis is a trombonist, electronic music composer-improviser and author of the upcoming Power Stronger Than Itself: The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press (http:// www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/236682.ctl).

JJA members participating include Seda Binbasgil (Turkey), Alain Derbez (Mexico), James Hale (Ottawa), Ashante Infantry (Toronto), Francisco Martinelli (Italy), Cyril Moshkow (Russia), Kazue Yokoi
(Tokyo) as well as Marcela Breton, Francis Davis, Gary Giddins, Don Heckman, Dan Morgenstern, Ron Scott, John Szwed and Ted Panken, all from the United States. Participants not officially unaffiliated with the JJA include Gwen Ansell (South Africa), Christian Broecking (Germany), Alex Dutilh (France), Andy Hamilton (UK), Patrik Landolt (Switzerland), Jason Lee (China), Alexander Pierrepont (France), Maxi Sickert (Germany), Bert Vuisje (Netherlends), Lars Westin (Sweden), and Jason Berry, June Cross, Stanley Crouch, Jennifer Odell, Ben Ratliff, Bill Shoemaker, Greg Tate, K. Leander Willliams and George Varga.

: Journalists on Music and World Culture is the culminating event of the Columbia/Harlem Festival of Global Jazz, which takes place from Wednesday, September 19 through Saturday, Sept. 29, 2007. The Festival, which is presented by Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies in partnership with Jazzmobile, Inc., and the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, will feature leading national and international musicians, journalists, and scholars in performances, conferences, symposia, film screenings, and technology-based community events, all open to the public.