Initiatives
Preserve. Promote. Elevate.
Initiative
Showcasing student musicians, emerging artists, and established professional performers.
Free · Outdoors · All Ages
The Summer Youth Jazz in the Park Series brings Seattle communities together through the power of jazz to preserve, promote, and elevate its rich African American heritage while investing in the next generation of musicians from diverse backgrounds.
This free, outdoor performance and education initiative features high school and college students, emerging young artists, and accomplished professional jazz musicians in dynamic intergenerational performances across Seattle parks. Each event pairs live music with engaging educational commentary exploring jazz's history, cultural significance, and enduring influence.
By placing young musicians alongside seasoned professionals, the series creates meaningful opportunities for mentorship, artistic growth, cultural pride, and career development. It also ensures that young people from diverse backgrounds can see themselves as both stewards of jazz history and contributors to its future.
Most importantly, the series brings high-quality, culturally relevant arts programming directly into Seattle neighborhoods — free and accessible to all — expanding opportunities for communities to experience, learn from, and participate in the living legacy of jazz.
Monthly · Intimate Venues
Old School Jazz Performance Nights is a monthly live music series featuring some of Seattle's most accomplished emerging and seasoned jazz artists.
Each performance pairs exceptional live music with storytelling and audience conversations that illuminate the artists, communities, and cultural history behind the music. The series places particular emphasis on the voices, experiences, and contributions of African American musicians and communities whose creativity and innovation are fundamental to the story of jazz.
Hosted at venues throughout the Seattle area, these intimate and engaging events create opportunities for audiences to experience great jazz while deepening their understanding of Seattle's rich jazz heritage. Sponsorship support helps keep admission affordable and accessible, with modest ticket prices where appropriate.
Old School Jazz Performance Nights brings Seattle's jazz history to life — one performance, one story, and one generation at a time.
Initiative
Connecting students with professional artists and educators through mentorship, collaboration, and skill-development activities.
Workshops · Mentorship · Skill Development
Mentorship & Engagement Salons bring artists and history directly to the next generation by connecting students and emerging musicians with professional jazz artists and educators through intimate workshops, mentorship, collaboration, and skill development.
Designed to strengthen both artistic growth and cultural understanding, the salons connect young musicians to the history, traditions, and African American cultural roots of jazz while helping them develop confidence, discipline, performance skills, and professional relationships.
Participants are recruited through local high schools, colleges and universities, community music schools, jazz education programs, cultural organizations, music educators, and professional jazz musicians.
The salons create meaningful intergenerational connections that help emerging artists understand, appreciate, and articulate jazz's roots, develop their own voices, and envision their future in this legacy art form.
Preserve. Promote. Elevate.
Contact
Questions, partnerships, or ideas for preserving and elevating Seattle's jazz heritage — we'd love to hear from you.
info@jazzheritageseattle.org