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

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Tom Brown is a marketing specialist with a focus on digital marketing strategies. He has successfully led campaigns that increased brand awareness and customer engagement. Tom Brown is a marketing specialist with a focus on digital marketing strategies. He has successfully led campaigns that increased brand awareness and customer engagement. Tom Brown is a marketing specialist with a focus on digital marketing strategies. He has successfully led campaigns that increased brand awareness and customer engagement.
Yulanda C. McKenzie

Coordinator

Coordinator
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

Editor

Editor
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

Project Manager

Project Manager
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.
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