Jazz Generation

03/19/2025

Please visit and support our latest collaborators every Thursday: the

02/12/2025

01/24/2025

12/11/2024

11/21/2024

We would like to thank for awarding us their FY2025 Grant award

11/16/2024

We celebrate the life of alto sax legend Lou Donaldson. A career spanning 70 years, Lou is well known as a pioneer of the scene and will be fondly remembered.

11/16/2024

We are sad to hear of the passing of the great Roy Haynes. We celebrate his wonderful talents that he bestowed upon the world.

10/24/2024

Chats with the Cats

Tell us about the Cortelyou Jazz Jam?

“The vibe at is kind of like a European café that serves beer, wine, and spirits with the focus and wine.
It’s a tried and true jam session format. I play a set with a trio using a different bass player and guitar or keyboard player every week. The jam session follows.
Stylistically anything goes within the jazz standard format.
Also, I try to keep the volume as closely to an acoustic jazz level as possible.
I pride myself in hosting a friendly, no attitude, jam session, where everybody gets to play a couple of tunes in order of their appearance. I will only cut you, if you really don’t cut it and people are getting upset”.

Any touring or album you would like to promote?

“I have an album with the Michael Vitali Trio, featuring Justin Wert .wert and Julian Smith in the works. It’s a trio record with Justin on guitar and Julian on bass. It’s a collaborative effort with mostly original music and a couple of standards and arrangements of pop songs. We recorded 10 tracks at Michael Brorby’s studio “Acoustic Recording” and it’s being mixed by Katsuhiko Naito

I’ll also be touring Europe in November. The tour will be 10/29-11/8 with performances in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. Aki Ishiguro will replace Justin on guitar.”

You can find the rest of the interview with Michael at jazzgeneration.org/blog/michaelvitalicwtc

10/05/2024

Hey peeps! For my birthday it would mean a lot if you can donate for this special cause. $5 to 5million will go a long way and impact a lot of musicians and communities. This “challenge” if it gets shared a lot (nudge) also makes us eligible for a grant through this donation platform, Zeffy.
Thanks

https://www.zeffy.com/donation-form/eca0e5ba-9697-4849-bdf3-9e73c7fbcacf

Jazz Generation: Generating performance and educational opportunities for all generations of musicians and audience members--- The best part of JG is that our precept is simple (to pay musicians more equitably for their work), but our impact is multi-fold (expanding access to high quality music in d...

09/24/2024

As we prepare for our 2nd Open Call auditions for our Jazz Standard Youth Orchestra at Cafe Ornithology, 12-3pm, Saturday Sept 28th, I will share below the essay from one of our students (Bix Cole) as he shared his experience in our program. With his help (he has since mentored) and many others along the way...This is how we have always rolled - so teachers - send us anyone who would benefit from regular performance and together we'll make sure others have the same experience. On a personal, I was so moved to read this but, had to pretend to myself I was reading about someone else. That is how honored I feel by this. It also led me to receive national recognition with the Young Arts organization.

09/17/2024

We are excited to be co-sponsoring 2024

09/05/2024

Jazz teachers! We want to welcome your students to our new edition of the Jazz Standsrd Youth Orchestra. For nearly 25 years, we offer this wonderful opportunity for free to students (mostly high schoolers) as one of our programs in Jazz Generation.
Alumni include phenoms such as Kojo Roney, Evan Sherman, Camille Thurman - Green, Davis Whitfield and multitudes more.
Send your students to audition this month! Two audition dates and ensembles will meet every other week on Saturdays Gotham Yardbird Sanctuary Ornithology Cafe.
Peace