Documenting & Interpreting the Philly Jazz Legacy

Jazz Bridge will partner with Philadelphia Jazz Project and Philadelphia Clef Club to engage in a discovery process exploring how to meaningfully preserve, interpret, and share Philadelphia’s expansive jazz history. Bringing together the region’s three major jazz organizations, the project will lay the foundation for a cooperative approach to documenting the city’s jazz legacy, with the goal of working together to develop a sustainable Philadelphia jazz archive with a central repository of historical resources for musicians, historians, and enthusiasts. Philadelphia has been home to many transformative figures in jazz history, including Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, and Sun Ra, in addition to lesser-known musicians who shaped the community and its music. This project represents the first concerted effort to collect and preserve original source materials that tell the story of the city’s vibrant jazz tradition through manuscripts, recordings, photographs, show programs, as well as oral histories.

Additional unrestricted funds are added to each grant for general operating support.