We miss our community and hope you and yours are well! Through these strange and challenging times, we know we will gather again in the future. In the meantime, BJP has been working to expand ways that we can support the jazz community, paying attention to healthy protocols.

First, a couple of updates. The piano is still here! The loan by Yamaha Canada of the gorgeous C3 grand piano was up in June but given the times and the current impossibility of fund-raising, Yamaha has extended our time. This has allowed us to welcome local musicians for rehearsals, sessions, live-streams and recordings. There aren’t many venues in town that have a great piano on offer (and offer a free space) so this is a significant help to the local community at a time when it is most needed.

COVID-19 delays affected our application for charitable status through CRA but we are hopefully on track now. I have had incredible help from a CRA employee who has been kind and thorough, so fingers crossed that our application is approved soon. This will allow us to issue tax receipts for donations and will open up additional granting streams.

BJP received grant money from the Canada Council that has allowed us to hire musicians for a new on-line initiative we have developed called Jazz Connections. This program has three educational streams: BJP Webinars presented by jazz musicians; Jazz Notes, a video series featuring jazz compositions edited with commentary that explains the jazz structure and creative process; and Five Questions, a video compilation that introduces Canadian jazz musicians to listeners through a series of short answers to five engaging questions.

Our plan, dependent on grant money and donations, is to create a subscription portal on the BJP website that will give access to content we produce and provide an income stream that will allow us to develop further programming. This will create new revenue streams for musicians as we hire them to host webinars and edit videos and provide licensing fees for video use. It will also allow us to reach a global audience and raise the profile of Canadian jazz music and musicians.

Musicians are feeling particularly isolated right now so we organized a BJP hang for jazz musicians recently via Zoom. It was a big success and we are going to continue and expand that initiative to help musicians connect with other peers.

Be careful, be well, be hopeful. And be in touch: send us your thoughts and ideas about our new initiatives, suggestions for other areas to explore and musicians you’d like to see when concerts return. As always, we appreciate your continued engagement and support.