Jazz Journalists Association Presents JazzBash Sun

Improving vastly the production values and interactivity commonplace in online meetings, SyncSpace.live enables the JazzBash! to host multi-media events in a staggered schedule simultaneously across five virtual spaces — ballroom, bar, stage and screening room, based on nationally-renown venues. Attendees can move independently through these spaces, hearing live music, viewing exclusive videos, chatting with each other without being overheard or interrupting programming, or addressing everyone present.

Jon Batiste, Sheila Jordan, Wadada Leo Smith, Charles Lloyd, Terence Blanchard, Maria Schneider, Christian McBride, Jason Moran, Ted Gioia, Vijay Iyer, Joel Ross, James Brandon Lewis, Mary Halvorson, James Francies, Jonathan Blake, Wycliff Gordon and Kurt Elling are among the 2022 JJA Jazz Awards winners who have confirmed participation in the JazzBash!

In-the-moment sets are scheduled to feature the singing trio Duchess with Anat Cohen, clarinet, from New York City; Anchorage multi-instrumentalist Yngvil Vatn Guttu and band; Chicago saxophonist Ernest Dawkins’ group, El Paso singer-pianist Amanda Eckery, and guitarist Louis Valenzuela from San Diego.

Jazz storytellers Bill Crow, Clair Daly, Peter Keepnews and Mark Ruffin will trade jokes; photographer Carol Friedman will tell the tales behind her pictures; pianist Deana Witkowski will perform a work by the subject of her Award-winning book Mary Louis Williams: Music for the Soul. Hot-topic panel discussions by jazz thought leaders, premieres of historic videos of Randy Weston and Sheila Jordan (among others), poet Keith Kelley reading from the works of the late, great Greg Tate and a live auction for a stateroom on the Jazz Cruise Blue Note at Sea 23 are among other JazzBash! delights.

Registation for Jazz Bash! is free to JJA members, 2022 Awards winners and nominees and Jazz Heroes, $25 for the general public. Some portions will be live-streamed on the JJA’s Facebook page, and posted in archived editions on the JJA’s YouTube channel, but you’ll really have to be at the Jazz Bash! at SyncSpace.live on Sunday, Sept. 11, 3 to 5:30 pm ET, to savor this unprecedented confabulation of jazz fest, party, conference, and Awards show.

The JJA’s Awards Online Bash has major sponsorship from Berklee College of Music, The Joyce and George Wein Foundation, The Jazz Foundation of America, SFJazz, Entertainment Cruise Productions, Monterey Jazz Fest/Kuumbwa Jazz, San Jose Jazz Festival, Stanford Jazz Workshop, Peabody Conservatory, Century Media Partners, High Note/Savant Records, Mack Avenue Records, Blue Note Records, Arkadia Records Pi Recordings, Braithwaite and Katz Communications, Carolyn McClair Public Relations, Jazz Promo Services and Sue Auclair Promotions: Marketing/PR/Business Development.

Further information on the JazzBash! is posted at  JJAJazzAwards.org and JJANews.org. For sponsorship opportunities, contact Howard Mandel, [email protected]