Philadelphia Jazz Experience Foundation

Philadelphia Jazz Experience Foundation The Philadelphia Jazz Experience is focused on education, artistic works, and more as it relates to the preservation & continuation of jazz.

What a beautiful night for a mission I'm incredibly proud to support.I'm on the board of Jazz Bridge, and that night was...
10/05/2026

What a beautiful night for a mission I'm incredibly proud to support.

I'm on the board of Jazz Bridge, and that night was a pretty good reminder of why.

We talk a lot about supporting jazz. Buy the ticket. Go see the show. Keep the music alive.

Jazz Bridge is doing something a little different. It takes care of the people who make the music.

These are musicians who have spent their lives playing, creating, teaching and giving us something that frankly would make Philadelphia a very different city without them. And sometimes those musicians hit a rough patch. A medical crisis. A bill they can't cover. Life happening, as it tends to do.

That's when Jazz Bridge shows up.

That night we had a room full of musicians, music lovers and people who believe these artists are worth showing up for. What made me particularly happy was seeing younger people there discovering Jazz Bridge and its mission for the first time.

Philadelphia's jazz legacy isn't something sitting in a museum. It's still being made every night by real people.

We should probably make sure we're taking care of them.

Huge thanks to everyone who came out, donated, played and helped move the mission forward, and to Cellar Dog for hosting us.

Proud to be a small part of this one.

Full story on the blog: https://harryhayman.com/blog/jazz-bridge-takes-care-of-philadelphias-musicians

If you care about Philadelphia jazz, you should know the work being done by the Philadelphia Jazz Legacy Project.They're...
10/03/2026

If you care about Philadelphia jazz, you should know the work being done by the Philadelphia Jazz Legacy Project.

They're doing the important work of documenting the musicians, clubs, neighborhoods and stories that made Philadelphia one of the great jazz cities in the world.

And this feels like a particularly good week to give them some love as Philadelphia celebrates what would have been John Coltrane's 100th birthday.

The Philadelphia Jazz Experience is proud to support their work and help make sure this history doesn't disappear.

Take a look at their latest newsletter, dig through the archives and see what they're working on.

There is a LOT of Philadelphia jazz history worth knowing.

And plenty more being made right now.

Full story on the blog: https://harryhayman.com/blog/philadelphia-jazz-legacy-project-coltrane-centennial

JAZZ IS ALIVE AND VERY, VERY WELL IN PHILADELPHIA.What a Fishtown Jazz Festival.By the second set there wasn't an empty ...
10/01/2026

JAZZ IS ALIVE AND VERY, VERY WELL IN PHILADELPHIA.

What a Fishtown Jazz Festival.

By the second set there wasn't an empty seat in the place. New faces everywhere. And the MUSIC. Holy smokes.

This is what I love about Philadelphia jazz. We spend a lot of time talking about the incredible history of this music in our city, as we should. But we're not simply preserving a legacy.

We're still making it.

Huge thanks to Gabor, Ben and the Black Squirrel Club for opening their doors when the weather forced everything inside. Turns out that worked out pretty damn well. Great room, great vibe and a whole lot of people packed in there listening to jazz.

And that's the part I don't want lost in all the fun. This was a Jazz Bridge event.

Jazz Bridge is there when a jazz or blues musician in the Philadelphia area hits a rough patch and needs some help. These are the same people we pay to hear, applaud from the audience and brag about as part of Philadelphia's culture.

Sometimes they need somebody in their corner too.

That's why I'm proud to be on the Jazz Bridge board.

Congrats to Doug, Paul, Bob and the entire Jazz Bridge crew for pulling off one hell of a festival.

And Philadelphia, keep showing up for the musicians who make this city sound like Philadelphia.

Full story on the blog: https://harryhayman.com/blog/fishtown-jazz-festival-jazz-bridge-black-squirrel-club

THIS is what a great night of jazz is supposed to be about.Ralph Bowen, Uri Caine, Madison Rast and Tom Cohen together a...
09/26/2026

THIS is what a great night of jazz is supposed to be about.

Ralph Bowen, Uri Caine, Madison Rast and Tom Cohen together at MONTCO Jazz Fest.

Come on.

Four ridiculous musicians, one hell of a band, and the proceeds from the night went to Jazz Bridge.

That last part matters a lot to me.

I'm proud to be on the board of Jazz Bridge because they take care of the people who make this music. When a jazz or blues musician in the Philadelphia area gets hit with a financial emergency, a health issue, housing trouble or one of the thousand other things life can throw at you, Jazz Bridge is there to help.

Pretty simple mission. Pretty damn important one.

We talk all the time about supporting live music, but somebody has to support the musicians too.

Huge thanks to Paul Krassen for hosting and Joanna for helping create the space for a night like this. Putting musicians on a stage, getting people into the room and then using that room to help other musicians is a pretty good use of an evening if you ask me.

And the music was freaking great.

Jazz survives because somebody gives the next musician a stage.

Saturday night we got to enjoy four extraordinary ones while helping make sure somebody else gets theirs.

Not bad for a night out.

Full story on the blog: https://harryhayman.com/blog/montco-jazz-fest-jazz-bridge-benefit

The best college jazz band in America is on North Broad Street, and I want to be clear that this is a result rather than...
09/24/2026

The best college jazz band in America is on North Broad Street, and I want to be clear that this is a result rather than local pride talking.

In January the Temple University Jazz Band won the National Collegiate Jazz Championship at Lincoln Center, hosted by Jazz at Lincoln Center and Wynton Marsalis. Ten schools were in it, among them the Eastman School of Music, Northwestern, Michigan State, Ohio State and the University of Texas at Austin. Temple won.

They did not only take the top prize. They took Outstanding Rhythm Section, Outstanding Trumpet Section and Outstanding Combo Performance, and thirteen individual player awards on top of those. They played two Duke Ellington pieces and a Chick Corea arrangement, which is a repertoire choice with nowhere to hide.

The band is directed by the trumpeter Terell Stafford. His instruction before the final was that they play with their hearts.

And there is an echo on that campus I cannot get past. On November 11, 1966, John Coltrane played Mitten Hall with Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Johnson and Rashied Ali, nine months before he died. Temple's student run radio station recorded it, the reels sat in an archive for decades, and the concert eventually came out as Offering: Live at Temple University.

On November 11 this year, the Coltrane 100 Philly season closes in that same hall.

Same room, sixty years apart, and the young players are still there. What would it take for the rest of the country to think of Philadelphia first?

https://jazzphiladelphia.org/coltrane/

Full story on the blog: https://harryhayman.com/blog/harry-hayman-temple-university-jazz-band-national-champions

On September 23 a Philadelphia radio station is giving an entire day to one musician. Not a special hour. Not an evening...
09/21/2026

On September 23 a Philadelphia radio station is giving an entire day to one musician. Not a special hour. Not an evening block. The whole day.

It would have been John Coltrane's hundredth birthday, and WRTI 90.1 is running 24 Hours of Coltrane.

At the same time, Councilmember Isaiah Thomas is moving to designate September 23 as John Coltrane Day in the City of Philadelphia. The legislation was drafted by Dr Anyabwile Love, the founder of the John Coltrane Symposium.

What I keep turning over is the difference between a street sign and a day.

We already have the street. There is a stretch of North Philadelphia named for him, and the house he lived in still stands at 1511 North 33rd Street. A sign is a noun. It sits there whether anybody reads it or not, and most days nobody does.

A day is not like that. A day only exists if somebody observes it. It has to be done, by people, every year, or it quietly stops being real. And this particular day comes with instructions, which are the simplest instructions any civic occasion has ever had. Turn the radio on.

Valerie V. Gay, the city's Chief Cultural Officer, put the whole centennial better than I can. "Coltrane 100 Philly is an invitation to experience our city through the music that helped define it."

So consider yourself invited. September 23, WRTI 90.1 FM, all day.

What is the first Coltrane record you ever heard the whole way through?

https://jazzphiladelphia.org/coltrane/

Full story on the blog: https://harryhayman.com/blog/harry-hayman-john-coltrane-day-wrti-september-23

Four players. One night. Every single ticket goes to the musicians who need it.On Saturday, September 19, Jazz Bridge pu...
09/17/2026

Four players. One night. Every single ticket goes to the musicians who need it.

On Saturday, September 19, Jazz Bridge puts a superband on the stage at Cigar Republic in Conshohocken as part of Montco Jazz Fest, and I could not be prouder to put the Philadelphia Jazz Experience behind it.

Look at who is playing.

Ralph Bowen on tenor saxophone, who won the Blue Note audition for Out of the Blue in 1985 and completed three world tours with Horace Silver.

Uri Caine on piano, born in this city, nominated for a Grammy, and the composer of The Passion of Octavius Catto for the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Madison Rast on bass, in Philadelphia since 1999 and still one of the first calls anybody makes.

Tom Cohen on drums, forty years on this scene and a lifelong love affair with Brazilian music.

That is not a pickup gig. That is a summit.

And here is the part that matters most to me.

All proceeds benefit Jazz Bridge, the Philadelphia nonprofit that has been catching this city's jazz and blues musicians since 2004. Rent, instrument repairs, a utility bill, a social worker who actually picks up the phone. The unglamorous things that keep a working musician working.

We are very good at celebrating this music in Philadelphia. Jazz Bridge takes care of the people who make it.

Saturday, September 19, 8:00 PM
Cigar Republic, 126 Fayette Street, Conshohocken
$25

Tickets: https://www.jazzbridge.org/montcojazzfest

Full story on the blog: https://harryhayman.com/blog/harry-hayman-jazz-bridge-superband-montco-jazz-fest

Who are you bringing with you?

09/15/2026

The Philadelphia Jazz Experience started with something my dad said to me.

He told me that if he did not know me, and did not know all the cool clubs downtown, he would just go to the Kimmel Center or the Annenberg and call it a night. Those places are great, and that is not a knock on them. But they are one part of the scene, not the whole scene.

That was the original inception. Make it possible for somebody to plan a night around jazz in this city without already knowing somebody.

There are a lot of people already doing good work here. The more the merrier. What I keep coming back to is the asset map. What do we have, what do we not have, who does what, where do we overlap.

You go to the art museum to look at things. This September that building would rather you listened.The Philadelphia Muse...
09/12/2026

You go to the art museum to look at things. This September that building would rather you listened.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is carrying seven live performances across September as part of Coltrane 100 Philly, alongside guided Jazz in Art tours, an improvised collage workshop and a film screening. Ten entries in one month, in a place most Philadelphians think of as quiet.

The percussionist Karen Smith opens it on the 5th. On the 20th, Lovett Hines has a youth ensemble on the floor. Isaiah Collier and the Chosen Few close it on the 25th in the Great Stair Hall.

I want to be careful about what that does and does not prove. It is not more jazz than a working club puts on, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. A club with a Thursday to Sunday calendar clears seven dates in a fortnight.

What it proves is something else, and I think it matters more. An institution decided what it was for. A museum could have honored a centennial with a wall panel, a listening station and a curator's note, and not one person would have objected. This one gave a musician a month of its floor.

That is an institution saying, in the only language institutions actually speak, which is the calendar, that John Coltrane belongs to the whole city and not only to the rooms that sell tickets to hear him.

September 5, 11, 12, 18, 19, 20 and 25.

Which Philadelphia building surprised you by turning into a music venue?

https://jazzphiladelphia.org/coltrane/

Full story on the blog: https://harryhayman.com/blog/harry-hayman-philadelphia-museum-of-art-coltrane-september

09/10/2026

We have been doing the summer concert series, getting out into the community and bringing jazz to local parks and other spaces around the city. Free of charge.

Part of why it matters to me is what it does for Jazz Bridge. Their mission is care for musicians in crisis, and that work is critical. Musicians in this city carry a lot of risk with very little safety net underneath them.

So the concerts do two things at once. People get live jazz in a park on a summer afternoon, and Jazz Bridge gets a light shone on what it does.

jazzbridge.org

Address

Philadelphia, PA

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Philadelphia Jazz Experience Foundation posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category