Join our community to get the latest updates, special offers, exclusive content, and much more.
LIVE!
JGI connects New York and New Orleans through bold scholarship, cross-generational performance, and the preservation of jazz legacies — expanding audiences, breaking barriers, and sparking new possibilities in improvised music.
DATE HEADER LINE
Soundoff Sessions
Free Jazz on Film: Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp Sub Title on 4 lines total space.
Integriti Reeves’s style is often described as “modern vintage,” an eclectic fusion of the old and the contemporary.
Inspired by classic jazz vocalists like Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, Reeves performs a hybrid of straight-ahead standards, Brazilian-inspired rhythms, pop and contemporary Black American Music.
Headline here
FEB 01, 2025
6 PM
Free Jazz on Film: Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and Title on 2 lines...
Venue goes here
FEB 01, 2025
6 PM
Free Jazz on Film: Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and Title on 2 lines...
Venue goes here
FEB 01, 2025
6 PM
Free Jazz on Film: Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and Title on 2 lines...
Venue goes here
Headline here
Free Jazz on Film: Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp Sub Title on 4 lines total space.
Integriti Reeves’s style is often described as “modern vintage,” an eclectic fusion of the old and the contemporary.
Inspired by classic jazz vocalists like Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, Reeves performs a hybrid of straight-ahead standards, Brazilian-inspired rhythms, pop and contemporary Music..
ABOUT JGI NEW YORK
The New York Community Initiative is anchored at Cafe Erzulie in Brooklyn but will reach across the entire city. It aims to build a more diverse grassroots audience for Great Black Music in New York; cultivate culturally active spaces; and support artists whose practices cross boundaries and create connections.
The Soundoff Sessions are a biweekly series of performances and open sessions taking place on Thursday nights at Cafe Erzulie in Brooklyn, on the Bed-Stuy/Bushwick border.
See upcoming shows →
Maybe somE images need a captions and that can go here on 2 lines
The Continuum Fellowship is a group of New York-based musicians and multidisciplinary artists, all under age 50, who have been invited to curate a series of concerts crossing generations and artistic media. Each fellow will curate a four-event residency at a different location in New York. Read more about the Continuum Fellows below.
Apply →
Maybe somE images need a captions and
that can go here on 2 lines
The Continuum Fellowship is a group of New York-based musicians and multidisciplinary artists, all under age 50, who have been invited to curate a series of concerts crossing generations and artistic media. Each fellow will curate a four-event residency at a different location in New York. Read more about the Continuum Fellows below.
Apply →
Maybe somE images need a captions and
that can go here on 2 lines
The Continuum Fellowship is a group of New York-based musicians and multidisciplinary artists, all under age 50, who have been invited to curate a series of concerts crossing generations and artistic media. Each fellow will curate a four-event residency at a different location in New York. Read more about the Continuum Fellows below.
Apply →
Maybe somE images need a captions and
that can go here on 2 lines
FELLOWS
Courtney Bryan
Space for Year here or something
Space for Year here or something
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Yulanda C. McKenzie
Space for Year here or something
Space for Year here or something
Yulanda C. McKenzie is the Jazz Studies Group Coordinator for the Jazz Generations Initiative and the Program Coordinator for the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. Passionate about supporting artistic and scholarly work in jazz, she plays a key role in developing programs, connecting communities, and fostering opportunities for musicians, researchers, and students. In her positions, she supports innovative programs, facilitates research and artistic collaboration, and helps advance the study and preservation of jazz culture. Yulanda brings commitment to community engagement and program development, contributing to the growth of both emerging scholars and seasoned practitioners within the jazz community.
The Jazz Generations Initiative cultivates creative futures in jazz performance and scholarship by celebrating the music’s past and keeping its present rooted in community.
Based in both New York and New Orleans, the JGI aims to promote interdisciplinary and intergenerational exchange; cultivate diverse audiences; address historical inequities; and expand archival preservation of jazz legacies.
The JGI is a multi-year initiative of the Mellon Foundation, fiscally sponsored by the Jazz Foundation of America. Led by Dr. Robert O’Meally and Dr. Courtney Bryan, the JGI will ultimately encompass a multimedia publication; a live music listings calendar for both New York and New Orleans; creative residencies, concerts and other live events in both cities; an oral history project; an interdisciplinary fellowship program for scholars, artists and activists; and other community-building initiatives that will connect audiences with musicians and scholars of various generations. At every step, the JGI’s work is shaped and guided by the leadership of artists, writers and jazz studies scholars.
STAFF
Courtney Bryan
Space for Year here or something
Space for Year here or something
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Yulanda C. McKenzie
Space for Year here or something
Space for Year here or something
Yulanda C. McKenzie is the Jazz Studies Group Coordinator for the Jazz Generations Initiative and the Program Coordinator for the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. Passionate about supporting artistic and scholarly work in jazz, she plays a key role in developing programs, connecting communities, and fostering opportunities for musicians, researchers, and students. In her positions, she supports innovative programs, facilitates research and artistic collaboration, and helps advance the study and preservation of jazz culture. Yulanda brings commitment to community engagement and program development, contributing to the growth of both emerging scholars and seasoned practitioners within the jazz community.
Giovanni Russonello
Space for Year here or something
Space for Year here or something
Giovanni Russonello is a writer, editor, organizer and educator working at the intersection of music, politics and community history. The first person to have served as both politics columnist and music critic for the New York Times, Gio is currently writing a book about Gil Scott-Heron and Washington, D.C., under contract to Metropolitan Books/Macmillan and Faber & Faber. Since 2010, Gio has served as co-founder and editor-in-chief of capitalbop.com, a web magazine covering D.C.’s jazz scene. He was a 2024 DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities fellow and a 2021 Logan Nonfiction Fellow. He currently lives in Brooklyn.
Denise Frazier
Space for Year here or something
Space for Year here or something
Denise Frazier is an educator, musician, and interdisciplinary artist from Houston, who has lived and worked in New Orleans since 2002. She is the Creative Director for Bamboula: Jazz Studies in Motion, the New Orleans arm of the Jazz Generations Initiative Project. Frazier recently curated programming for Prospect NOLA and was a 2023-2024 MLK Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research interests currently include the Gulf South and the Anthropocene, sound studies and the natural, and built environments of the Gulf South and Circum-Caribbean. She is the co-founder of Les Cenelles, a string and technological interfacing ensemble that performs African Diasporic music through a prismatic lens that honors African and Indigenous ancestors and chronicles ecological realities. As a company member of Goat in the Road Productions, Frazier has used her skills as an actor and as a musical composer in immersive performances and collaborations that tell lesser known stories. She is the proud parent of one son.
ABOUT
