Jazz Society of Eastern Iowa off to a strong start
By Scott Kruger, Development Director, KCCK jazz radio
Last spring, posters began popping up around town proclaiming the coming Cedar Rapids Jazz and Show Choir festival. Truth be told, however, there was no festival, at least no festival with an organizing committee, promoter, sponsors, coordinated venues, or budget of any kind. Even the performers weren’t really aware of any festival. Behind it was only one man, Niles Ross, whose vision has transformed a pseudo-festival into a fast growing organization committed to preserving, educating, and promoting jazz.

The Jazz Society of Eastern Iowa can trace its beginnings back to the spring of 1998, a few short months after Ross, a retired research pharmacist from St. Louis, moved to Cedar Rapids. An avid jazz fan, Ross says that one of the primary reasons for choosing Cedar Rapids was the strength of the local live jazz scene and the availability of a jazz radio station in KCCK.
So Ross quickly became involved in the local jazz scene, taking in the local venues and getting to know local artists. However, despite the wealth of jazz in Cedar Rapids, Ross noted that the one thing this community was sorely lacking was its own jazz festival.

“If you look at a map of eastern Iowa, you will notice that Cedar Rapids is surrounded by jazz festivals,” Ross reports. “There is a festival in Iowa City, in the Quad Cities, one in Waterloo and Cedar Falls, one in Dubuque, yet there is nothing in Cedar Rapids. We are surrounded, literally and figuratively, by jazz festivals.”

Around April 1998, Ross noticed a jazz event scheduled for every evening for an entire week.
“The next week, it was the same exact thing,” recalls Ross. “Then things settled down, but the next year it all happened again: a
jazz event scheduled every night for two straight weeks.”

What was happening during these two weeks was that the normal club dates for area musicians coinciding with the end-of-school year jazz concerts put on by local high schools and colleges. Included in the mix were also some nationally recognized acts.

This spring, Ross amassed a calendar of over 50 area jazz events happening in late April and early May. He had his jazz festival, albeit an unofficial one.

“I suddenly realized that we have a jazz festival in Cedar Rapids. Nobody knows about it, but we have one.”
Ross’ calendar and ideas for a jazz festival were emailed to Mayor Lee Clancey, who in turn informed Ross that she was excited about the idea and forwarded the message to Cedar Rapids Convention and Visitors’ Bureau Director Josh Schamburger. Ross recalls that a meeting was then called between him, the Bureau, and several jazz educators and promoters in Cedar Rapids.
By that time, the first concert dates in April were only a few weeks away, too soon to organize anything official. However, the group, including Coe College band director Bill Carson and Washington High School band director Bill Danser, agreed to meet to begin planning for next year.

“By this time, we had an organization beginning to take shape,” Ross says. “I was making connections with the people that could make this thing happen. I also called a graphic designer, Jill McClimon, to help put together a poster with a calendar for all these events and we put it up all over town. We called it the Cedar Rapids Jazz and Show Choir Festival, but we were basically promoting a jazz festival that didn’t exist.”

“All smoke and mirrors,” Ross laughed. But from this simple project, the Jazz Society of Eastern Iowa was soon after born.
Membership has grown through interest spread by word of mouth and through publicity on KCCK, at Jazz Under the Stars, and through newspaper articles. Paul Williams, Rockwell engineer, KCCK member, and husband to local jazz great Gail Williams, was first introduced to Niles Ross through a Gazette article published in April.

“I read the article and then contacted Niles to see how we could get involved,” recalls Williams. “It was an opportunity to give back to the community and indulge in something that I really enjoy; an opportunity to increase the level of knowledge, understanding, enjoyment, and appreciation of jazz.”

The Jazz Society of Eastern Iowa has met several times through the summer and in that short time has accomplished a great deal. It is an officially registered 503(c)(3) nonprofit organization chartered for the furtherance of jazz music and education in Eastern Iowa. The group has chosen a board of directors, executive officers, committee members, and has a list of over 100 interested persons looking to get involved with the organization.

“Our first meeting was only in April in my house. I am amazed that we are as far as we are already,” stated Ross.
The goals of the organization have also taken shape, the foremost being what got the group together in the first place—a Cedar Rapids jazz festival. Ross brought to the table a vision of a jazz festival that would be truly unique not only to Iowa but also to the nation. One that combines both music entertainment and jazz education.

The goal is to repackage what is already taking place in Cedar Rapids during April and May, says Ross. There are already several jazz events at the schools and in local clubs, many of them featuring well known national acts. The educational events would be the foundation for a new festival; coordinating all of the high school and college events. The goal would be to build around those two weeks of events with a weekend festival featuring the big name artists at the center.

“You could set up a weekend event where young people can experience jazz music and maybe even work with the artists,” says Ross. “There isn’t a single jazz festival that combines jazz music and jazz education in the whole country.”
However, Ross says that this is his dream, his vision for the future and both he and JSEI board member Williams state that realization of this goal may not be attainable for a few years.

“A jazz festival is further down the road because we are talking about dollars. But now we have such a strong level of interest that we have an opportunity to do a festival in the foreseeable future,” says Williams.

The Jazz Society has other goals that may have an even greater impact on the jazz culture in Eastern Iowa. One is to reconnect the jazz and live music audience with the renewed wealth of local jazz talent performing every weekend.

Dan Knight, a jazz pianist who teaches at Kirkwood and Grinell College, says that the popularity of jazz is on the upswing and there is an audience of older jazz lovers and new younger fans looking to reconnect with live jazz. Knight has been performing jazz professionally for over 25 years, giving him a unique perspective on how the live music scene has changed.

“The advent of disco really killed live music of all types,” recalled Knight. “The whole scene went from live musicians playing venues for small groups of people to canned entertainment and to DJs—the club scene that people are so familiar with now.”
Around that time, Knight says the live music scene, which was vibrant in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, fell by the wayside. Several venues with live music either closed or switched to the canned format.

“For a while there was no place to hear jazz,” says Knight. “But now jazz is making a comeback from its near death experience. Since then, new places have sprung up and musicians have worked out their own gigs. We were still here and we still wanted to play so we went out and found our own gigs. And now the audience is coming back. If it hadn’t been for local events like Jazz Under the Stars, the audience would have died completely. Now we have people coming back.”

Hence an immediate goal of JSEI is to guide a jazz-hungry audience to the musicians and local venues. The society’s web site has a calendar listing live jazz events through April 2001 with frequent updates and additions. Society members also receive weekly emails updating the calendar of events and there is also a plan to begin publishing a newsletter featuring events for the coming months.

“I am an avid newspaper reader, but I think opening up the Gazette on Friday and finding out there is music that night is too late,” says Ross. “I want to give people time to plan and I think there are opportunities to let people know in advance what is going on.”

“Niles and I have talked about this a lot—that it is really tough pulling all this information together,” says Knight. “Jazz artists are scattered all over the place, but we are out there playing. The audience has lost its way trying to find us.”

Knight and Williams both note that connecting an audience with the music will demonstrate the commercial viability of live jazz to club owners and create more opportunities for live music in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City.

“Something that is immediately noticeable is how few opportunities there are to play live,” says Williams. “There aren’t very many places that regularly feature jazz; you can easily count on the fingers of one hand how many venues have jazz on a regular basis. The ironic thing about that is that there are so many talented jazz players in the area.”

“We are supporting the established jazz clubs that are here and maybe even help propagate more jazz music venues in the area to not only listen to jazz, but to give the tons of talented musicians in the area, especially the young kids coming up, a place to play,” says Knight.

Ross wants to couple the calendar with a database of all local musicians, providing biographical and historical information as well as what kind of show a jazz patron will be treated to. The goal is to target local jazz lovers trying to connect with the local jazz scene.

“What happens if you don’t go out often enough to know who is who and what band plays what?” asks Ross.
The third goal is to foster a jazz education program. Not just the big festival says Ross, but a continuing series of jazz seminars where the public can experience a performance and a jazz history lesson.

“It would be an educational event as much as an entertainment event,” says Ross. “You could have monthly events centered on a discrete topic of jazz music or jazz history.”

These events could cover a small piece of jazz history, a personality, or genre of music—you would never run out of topics, quips Ross—and be written and hosted by a volunteer jazz educator.

“We have over 20 music educators at the high school and college level in and around Linn County, not to mention the many knowledgeable jazz musicians. We have huge educational resources,” exclaims Ross.

Such a program is important to maintain a strong jazz fan base, according to Knight. “We are growing a new generation of jazz fan that will be educated as to what jazz is as well as being knowledgeable about listening to, even interested in playing, jazz. Coordinating education and communication between jazz educators, jazz musicians, and jazz fans solidifies the jazz base in the community.”

Ross does not question the cultural presence and strength of jazz in the Eastern Iowa community. Both Ross and Knight recognize the wealth of jazz resources in the area, from school music programs to local artists to having KCCK broadcasting jazz full time. However, both see a need for a unifying and organizational force to help pull all the elements together. “KCCK and the Jazz Society have a complimentary role,” says Ross. “KCCK’s involvement has enhanced society membership, making connections and creating visibility for the organization—it lends us legitimacy. I would hope that KCCK members would see an additional value to the community in having both organizations.”

“But there are some things KCCK can’t do,” adds Knight. “It can’t facilitate the kind of interaction between jazz educators and jazz musicians to help create jazz educational opportunities for the whole community. What KCCK does is amazing—it presents music in a way that is cogent and literate and artistic across a broad spectrum of jazz. The Jazz Society can take on the finer points of jazz, concentrate on a particular historical piece of jazz. We will expand on what KCCK is doing.”

However, all are quick to note that there would be no talk of a Jazz Society of Eastern Iowa without KCCK.

“The Jazz Society would be in much worse shape if KCCK did not exist,” says Williams. “It has laid the groundwork and built up the patronage.”

The immediate need for JSEI is to get that pre-existing patronage involved. JSEI will be successful only if jazz lover get involved, says Ross.

“Musicians and educators don’t have time to do all the necessary work—they are rehearsing, performing, directing, teaching. It’s the non-music people who need to make the time to make this thing go.”

“We need to grow from this nucleus of the core group that had this vision to incorporate the dreams and visions of a number of people where jazz is concerned,” says Knight. “It will be one of those things that will allow true jazz fans and supporters to unite with jazz musicians and educators and promoters to further the music and help keep it alive.”

And for Ross, the Jazz Society of Eastern Iowa will need to go on without him at the helm.

“I have a view and I have a vision, but I am not king of the world and at some point there will be an organization that will go where it wants to go. That may or may not be where I want it to go. But I want the organization to be what it wants to be, let it determine its own future through the people to join the society. The baby has been born, time for me to let it grow.”

Jazz Society of Eastern Iowa has regular meetings scheduled on the last Monday of every month at the Lighthouse Inn in Cedar Rapids at 7:00 p.m. All are welcome to attend. For more information, you may contact Niles Ross at 369-9874. Email at JazzInEIowa@juno.com