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Smithsonian Web Sites About Jazz

Jazz Singer's Radio
www.JazzSingersRadio.org
The award winning 13 part Public Radio International series aired around the nation.

Jazz Smithsonian Radio Series
http://www.si.edu/sp/onair/airjazz.htm
The Award winning series featuring David Baker and the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and hosted by Lena Horne. The series was aired on National Public Radio.

IMAX Jazz Cafe
http://www.mnh.si.edu/imax/
A weekly Friday night jazz performance series at the National Museum of Natural History.

Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service
Jazz Exhibits

Latin Jazz: La Combinacion Perfecta
http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibit_main.asp?id=61
Latin Jazz celebrates this moveable melange of musical styles and sounds. This bilingual exhibition explores the history, cultural context, musicians, places, instruments, and dance aesthetic behind the development of this musical genre. It features instruments: a tres, claves, maracas, congas, bongos, güiros, tamboras, drums, horns, cuatros, timbales, and five-key flutes (some owned by jazz greats); documents; photographs; musical scores; programs; album covers; and other artifacts. Maps, audio-visual stations, vintage film footage, and oral history interviews enhance the exhibition's impact.
Tour begins: December 2002

Jazz age in Paris 1914-1940
http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibit_main.asp?id=58
With graphics and backgrounds evocative of the period, the small-format exhibition presents nearly 100 images, including portrait and candid photographs, posters, programs, and other printed memorabilia. The visual story is complemented by introductory text and wide-ranging quotations from jazz-age musicians, writers, and entertainers. A 30-minute video accompanies the exhibition.
Tour through: March 2003

Past Exhibits

Beyond Category SITES
http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibit_main.asp?id=34
This small-format presentation of Beyond Category is based on the 5,000-square-foot exhibition originally developed by SITES and the Division of Musical History, National Museum of American History. Retaining the dramatic atmosphere of the original exhibition, this freestanding panel design incorporates theatrical photo murals and panels layered with deep, vibrant colors as backdrops to over 130 copy photographs and documents. The exhibition is comprised of six sections to tell Ellington's complete story. The video Beyond Category: The Musical Genius of Duke Ellington and an interactive computer program complete this multidimensional portrait of the man and his music.
Toured through: March 2001( Fully booked)

Smithsonian Jazz Programs and Organizations Web Sites

America's Jazz Heritage
http://www.si.edu/ajazzh/
http://www.sites.si.edu/about/jazz.htm
America's Jazz Heritage is a ten-year initiative to research, preserve, and present the history of jazz through exhibitions, performances, recordings, radio, publications, and educational programs at the Smithsonian and across the nation.

Jazz Oral History Project
http://www.si.edu/ajazzh/johp.htm
The Smithsonian Institution initiated the Jazz Oral History Project in 1972 with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1980, the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, became the administrator and repository of the 122 taped and transcribed interviews collected until the project's end in 1984.
In 1992, a new collaboration reactivated the project and expanded its scope as the Jazz Oral History Program (JOHP). The Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund awarded a grant to the Smithsonian Institution to create "America's Jazz Heritage, A Partnership of the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and the Smithsonian Institution." This partnership supports a ten-year national jazz celebration including touring exhibitions, performances, educational programs, recordings, special events, publications, radio programs, and the Jazz Oral History Program, located at the National Museum of American History.

SJMO
http://www.smithsonianjazz.org
The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra (SJMO) was founded in 1990 by the National Museum of American History. Its mandate is to preserve the history of jazz by re-creating the greatest performances of all time. The ensemble is led by conductor David Baker (photo on left), chairman of the jazz department at the Indiana University School of Music, and a noted composer and author. Its eclectic repertoire ranges from Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Fletcher Henderson to Jimmie Lunceford, Glenn Miller, and Stan Kenton. The SJMO's versatile musicians don't just play the music; they duplicate the individual styles of saxophonist Johnny Hodges, trumpeter Miles Davis, and dozens of other outstanding instrumentalists.

PAAC
http://americanhistory.si.edu/paac/index.htm
The purpose of PAAC is to systematically research, interpret, document and preserve the historical and cultural life and legacy of Americans of African descent through public programs, publications, and other media. The program's work requires the development of strong ties with community organizations, schools, and scholarly research centers for the purpose of organizing programs, broadly disseminating educational materials, and training emerging researchers and scholars in African American studies, cultural studies, and public history.

Duke Ellington Youth Project
http://americanhistory.si.edu/paac/deyf/index.htm
From its inception, The Duke Ellington Youth Project has encouraged young people to absorb the life and times of Duke Ellington and enjoy his music. This gallery offers only a small glimpse into the postive energy, quality and creativity exhibited by participants in The Duke Ellington Youth Project; and demonstrates well the power of the project and its curriculum.

The Anacostia Museum Center for African American Culture
http://www.si.edu/anacostia
The Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture has grown from an experiment in community outreach to a national resource devoted to the identification, documentation, protection, and interpretation of the African American experience. The museum also examines contemporary urban issues, including housing, transportation, and health care, and their impact upon the African American community.

The National Portrait Gallery
virtual galleries of past exhibits

Louis Armstrong- A cultural legacy

http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/armstrong/index.htm
Video and audio clips of Armstrong in performance, paintings, drawings, photographs, and related memorabilia combine to create a vivid portrait of the jazz giant who rose from poverty to prominence as one of the most important musicians of his time. Organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. Support for the Washington showing is provided by Infiniti Division of Nissan Motor Corporation U.S.A. First floor.
July 26 through December 1, 1996.

Le Tumulte Noir: Paul Colin's Jazz Age Portfolio
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/noir/broch3.htm
In 1927, Josephine Baker's friend and advocate, the French poster artist Paul Conlin, captured Baker's explosive performing presence, and Paris's profound reaction to black culture during the 1920s. In a portfolio of forty-four lithographs titled Le Tumulte Noir ("The Black Craze"). The fifteen sheets on view were selected from the portfolio in the Gallery's collection. First floor.
January 31 through September 14, 1997.

Red Hot and Blue- A Salute to American Musicals
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/rh&b/index.htm
The National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American History salute Broadway and Hollywood with this jointly sponsored major exhibition on the history of the American musical and the people who gave it life. Approximately four hundred photographs, caricatures, set designs, costumes, other memorabilia, and audio and video clips trace the musical from its immigrant roots in nineteenth-century vaudeville, through its glittering rise on Broadway's "Great White Way," and through Hollywood's gleaming soundstages, to its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, ending with the modern musical.
October 25, 1996 through July 6, 1997.

Touring:

George Gershwin Painting by
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/brush/gersh.htm
From the exhibition "A Brush with History A Brush with History: Paintings from the National Portrait Gallery". The portraits in "A Brush with History" date from the 1720s to the 1990s and vary in style and technique from the most sophisticated such as those by Gilbert Stuart and John Singer Sargent to those by self-taught artists, including Thomas Badger and William Elwell. Some portraits include details that tell us about the sitter at first glance; others benefit from insights offered in contemporary descriptions. These paintings, collected by the Gallery because of the sitter's role in American history and culture, also form a narrative about American portraiture in all its variety.
August 6, 2001 through October 14, 2001
The National Museum of Western Art
Tokyo, Japan