Jazz in a Pandemic: How Clubs Are (Not) Adapting

By Seth Berman | December 9, 2020 |

The pandemic has affected society in profound ways. The way that we perform and listen to music is among the many aspects of life that have been fundamentally changed. With the closure of many venues and social distancing policies in place, live music has become impossible or incredibly difficult to present. Jazz has been particularly impacted by this loss. The genre relies heavily on live performance to develop and grow. To this extent, I decided to explore how jazz clubs in Boston have adapted to the pandemic, and how they continue to showcase music and support the jazz scene.

Live performance has always been an integral part of jazz. An article from the journal Psychology of Music in 2012 uses interviews of artists and spectators to examine how important the audience-musician relation is to jazz and the role the venue plays in this connection. Some musicians interviewed said that an audience provides a purpose for their playing, and that the feedback you get from playing live is integral to the gig (although not all musicians felt this way). Audience members interviewed mentioned how they prefer smaller venues to larger ones, as it allows the feeling of a more intimate connection with the performer (Brand et al.). A similar article from the Journal of New Music Research explores how and why an audience participated in the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues and Festival and how they also contributed to the event. The article notes the idea that some attendees found the festival appealing because other people who were into jazz would also be present. Participants also enjoyed how close you could get to the performing musicians, and how live performance brings a different aspect to the music that cannot be replicated in recordings. This article shows how important active relationships are to jazz, and how having an audience can improve a performance by providing an atmosphere for other attendees (Burland and Pitts). With COVID, these positive, reciprocal emotions have been removed.

From a psychological perspective, an article from Musicae Scientiae examines how jazz musicians communicate emotion through musical ideas but also through body movements. It shows that pairs of musicians playing free jazz solos can reliably translate emotions such as “happy” or “sad” to their partner through their music, but also through their physical expressions, even when they had not played with the partner before (Wöllner). It is clear that jazz thrives off in-person performance and audience interaction, all facets that cannot be safely achieved during our current pandemic.

The inspiration for my research into jazz club operations during the pandemic came from this article from the New York Times. In “Jazz Lives in Clubs. The Pandemic Is Threatening Its Future,” the authors look at how local venues are integral to the health of the jazz genre, and why their closures from the COVID Pandemic could hurt its future. The piece also mentions that some venues in New York City have livestreamed bands from the club, without an audience, as a way to keep the music going (Sisario and Russonello). Hearing the concern in this article from the musicians about their livelihood, the health of jazz in the city, and the way that venues have changed, made me want to look more into how the jazz scene here in Boston is adapting.

To begin my research, I reached out to several clubs and individuals involved with jazz here in Boston, including Scullers Jazz Club and Wally’s Café. I was hoping to interview someone from the club and ask them how they have been impacted by the pandemic and how they have adapted to it. Unfortunately, I did not hear back from any clubs or individuals. My guess is that a lot of the businesses are under great financial distress, and managers find it hard to take time out of their schedules to talk to a student.

Dear Scullers Jazz Club,

I hope that the fall has been going well for you so far, especially in these crazy times. I am a student at Northeastern University taking an ethnomusicology class where I am conducting a research project on how COVID-19 has affected the jazz scene in Boston through the closure of many clubs along with social distancing measures preventing musicians from playing together in-person. Would someone from Scullers be interested in being interviewed for the project? If so, it would be great if you could let me know what times would work best for them and their contact information.

Thank you,

Seth Berman

Despite not hearing back from these venues, and my frustration from not being able to get in contact with anyone, I was hopeful that many of their websites would list virtual performances or events they were holding in place of their regular routine. After searching through the websites, I was surprised to find that there were basically no events being put on by the clubs. Wally’s Café, Regattabar, and The Beehive did not have any performances listed on their website, while Scullers Jazz Club only had events once a week on Friday nights at a time when I was, unfortunately, booked and unable to watch. The fact that most venues had decidedly not adapted to the pandemic with online programming came as a shock to me. I had expected that most clubs would decide to put on virtual performances as a way to help keep their doors open while also providing support for the local jazz scene. It seemed, however, that many clubs had either decided that it was not worth putting on these virtual events or perhaps they were not able to.

beehive_screenshot

In lieu of not being able to contact any of the clubs and with virtual performances being very sparce, I decided to interview my saxophone teacher, Professor James Merenda, who also has a band here in Boston. During the interview, we discussed how he has adapted to performing music during the pandemic, and how he thinks the jazz scene has been impacted. During our conversation, Professor Merenda mentioned that he was supposed to play a livestreamed show from inside a club, like what I read they were doing in some venues in New York City, but it ended up being cancelled. This anecdote backed up what I had been experiencing when trying to search for virtual shows to attend. Merenda also said that because playing together is almost impossible over Zoom, he has been composing pieces and having members of his band perform them solo. He said that this inability to play together means that “…everyone definitely grew individually. But, as a band, and playing together, [there has] been zero progress”

When discussing how the pandemic is affecting the growth of the genre, Merenda said that after 2008 and the Great Recession, many clubs did not bring back music when the economy recovered, and he is worried that this may happen again. Reflecting on some of the articles discussing how an audience is critical to some performers, I asked Merenda about how he feeds off an audience’s energy. He responded by saying “I’m pretty much 100 percent energy, like that’s the thing I bring to the table and that is all about what I am,” and also, “It’s difficult to have that same feeling when there’s two people in the audience, compared to 100 or 1000, but you have to play with that same intensity because reaching people is really, really what it’s about for me” (Personal Interview).

After this interview, and it being apparent that livestreamed jazz was not happening with any frequency in Boston, I decided to look to what jazz musicians were putting on YouTube and other platforms. For this research, I examined the band Butcher Brown. During the pandemic, Butcher Brown has been putting out a series of videos called #MothershipMonday. In these videos, members of the band record and film their individual parts, which are then brought together in a stylized video. While not livestreamed, these videos seem to be one of the prominent ways that jazz music, and music in general, can be continued to be made during this time.

mothership monday

Although  I am not a professional musician, through Northeastern I was able to perform in the kind of livestreamed show that I thought more clubs would be presenting. We played in a large venue so that we were all able to be 6ft apart, and every musician wore a mask, including myself. My mask had a small slit in it for my saxophone mouthpiece and I had a covering on the bell of my horn. It felt fantastic to make music with others in a safe environment, and it felt even better to then be able to share it with others over a Zoom livestream. I had hoped that more clubs would be able to put on performances like this and share the music.

For this project, I would have liked to be able to interview the owners and managers of Boston jazz clubs, and I think that a lot more research could be done into how these venues see themselves operating now, and post-coronavirus. In the future, it would be interesting to research how the jazz scene has been altered post-pandemic. Will the virtual tools that have come to prominence still be used? Will live, in-person music come back in focus, or will we see a fusion of the two?

Acknowledgments:

I would like to thank Professor James Merenda for taking the time to conduct an interview. It was great talking to him, and his contributions to this project are invaluable.

Endnotes:

Brand, Gail, et al. “The Reciprocal Relationship between Jazz Musicians and Audiences in Live Performances: A Pilot Qualitative Study.” Psychology of Music, vol. 40, no. 5, 2012, pp. 634–651., doi:10.1177/0305735612448509.

Berman, Seth. Personal interview. 23 Nov 2020.

Burland, Karen, and Stephanie E. Pitts. “Understanding Jazz Audiences: Listening and Learning at the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.” Journal of New Music Research, vol. 39, no. 2, 22 July 2010, pp. 125–134., doi:10.1080/09298215.2010.493613.

Sisario, B., & Russonello, G. (2020, September 8). Jazz Lives in Clubs. The Pandemic Is Threatening Its Future. The New York Times. Retrieved October 2, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/arts/music/jazz-clubs-coronavirus.html

Wöllner, Clemens. “Call and Response: Musical and Bodily Interactions in Jazz Improvisation Duos.” Musicae Scientiae, vol. 24, no. 1, 2018, pp. 44–59., doi:10.1177/1029864918772004.

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