The Arts Betrayed - the Baltimore Jazz Advisory Committee
One obstacle to creative evolution and thinking in the arts come from "experts." What I've found is that while they may indeed have expertise in some areas, it doesn't go beyond that. They are so caught up in their "thing" that their minds have become inflexible. That goes for jazz experts as well.
Back in the early 1990's I was on mayor Kurt Schmoke's jazz advisory committee, in regard to making Howard Street an "Avenue for the Arts." The first meeting was going well, until one of our city's jazz "experts" commented that because Baltimore was located between D.C and New York, Baltimore, in spite of it's illustrious jazz past, had little chance of becoming known as a jazz city.
I immediately stood up and said that we needed to forget New York and D.C, and carve our own niche: that my wife, Jane Lamar-Spicka, had been writing the jazz column for Music Monthly magazine for several years: that we knew of the rich jazz talent that was here: that all we had to do was promote it.
Well, you could see the effect that had when the next speaker, another local jazz “expert,” commented on a certain CD that had been just released, (by a vocalist who just so happened to be the wife of that previous “expert”), that was said to, "mark the return of jazz to Baltimore after a 10-year hiatus."
This person was oblivious to what I’d just said.
Jane and I had been getting CD’s, cassettes, and other promotional material sent to us on a regular basis.
Like I said earlier, these people’s minds were inflexible. They could not see what was happening around them.
As a result, Kurt Schmoke’s ambitious idea was betrayed, stabbed in the back by the very people one would think would be most interested in promoting Baltimore’s jazz scene. In about a month, the committee was dead.
Thankfully, in 2002, Barry Glassman founded the Baltimore Jazz Alliance, which has survived and grown stronger.
The thing is, this could have happened 10-years sooner.
Back in the early 1990's I was on mayor Kurt Schmoke's jazz advisory committee, in regard to making Howard Street an "Avenue for the Arts." The first meeting was going well, until one of our city's jazz "experts" commented that because Baltimore was located between D.C and New York, Baltimore, in spite of it's illustrious jazz past, had little chance of becoming known as a jazz city.
I immediately stood up and said that we needed to forget New York and D.C, and carve our own niche: that my wife, Jane Lamar-Spicka, had been writing the jazz column for Music Monthly magazine for several years: that we knew of the rich jazz talent that was here: that all we had to do was promote it.
Well, you could see the effect that had when the next speaker, another local jazz “expert,” commented on a certain CD that had been just released, (by a vocalist who just so happened to be the wife of that previous “expert”), that was said to, "mark the return of jazz to Baltimore after a 10-year hiatus."
This person was oblivious to what I’d just said.
Jane and I had been getting CD’s, cassettes, and other promotional material sent to us on a regular basis.
Like I said earlier, these people’s minds were inflexible. They could not see what was happening around them.
As a result, Kurt Schmoke’s ambitious idea was betrayed, stabbed in the back by the very people one would think would be most interested in promoting Baltimore’s jazz scene. In about a month, the committee was dead.
Thankfully, in 2002, Barry Glassman founded the Baltimore Jazz Alliance, which has survived and grown stronger.
The thing is, this could have happened 10-years sooner.