Announcement – Jazz In Continuum

An important announcement from Sue Thompson, Founder/Director of Jazz In Continuum

Jazz In Continuum announcement feb 18 2012

It is with sadness but also a sense of great things to come that, as a Director of Eastside radio and founder/producer of Jazz In Continuum (a youth program offering performance and radio opportunity), I hand over the performance component of it to those better resourced to do the best they can for the youth of Australia in Jazz performance.

It has given me great pleasure, as well as many challenges, to provide a platform for young musicians to showcase their performance talents at free events, to feel a valuable part of the wider community, and to be heard: to be broadcast live on air and/or recorded live and played on air. But I am happy to see much progress on what was once a lack of healthy engagement with our talented youth, now surging forward towards greater inclusion and performance opportunity in NSW.

Already this year, Eastside Radio has given its full support to the Jazzgroove Summer Festival and Kinetic Jazz Festival, both with similar performative goals and an increasing youth component. Both these festivals receive support through grants, sponsorships, individuals and ticketed events, and have within their operational structures, music teachers of institutions (such as the Sydney Conservatorium and AIM), and professional, networking jazz musicians better resourced to help younger musicians coming up through the ranks.

Jazz In Continuum – a community event organised by me as a volunteer Director of Eastside Radio, with the support of two paid station staff juggling other events and a few extra volunteers – is simply unsustainable in this wider context. It is regrettable but it is also realistic.

The idea of a youth jazz festival was seeded by the lack of public performance opportunity available to my child at high school. All skilled up with no place to play. I set out to change this several years ago and in so doing, provided hundreds of children with that opportunity. I am very proud to have done so. And, even though I have no name in the jazz world, I know my energy and ideas have been instrumental (pun intended) in the wheels of such fast and recent progress and that in the long term, the benefit will be felt by many for a long time to come.

We had an incredible line up of youngsters last year playing alongside the cream of Australia’s jazz players -Judy Bailey, Mark Isaacs, John Morrison and educator Saul Richardson of Australian Jazz Workshop and recently retired from his teaching post at North Sydney Boys High, who has just incorporated the Sydney Youth Jazz Orchestra, that I’m sure will go on to great things.

And, further to this, with the appointment of trumpeter James Morrison to the Queensland Music Festival and Professor Karl Krammer to Principal of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, himself a brass player and founder of music festivals, I think we can feel safe in our hope that a lot more will be done for young musicians in Australia, both in education and in performance.

With this, and after many volunteered hours of establishing festivals and working towards a greater presence of young musicians on the public stage with the help of Eastside Radio and others, I extend my best hopes and wishes to these new festivals and bigger jazz and media organisations to do well in serving Australia’s musical youth.

As for the Jazz in Continuum youth radio program component – Saturdays 5.30-6.30pm – on Eastside Radio 89.7fm (or www.eastsidfm.org), this will hopefully continue to introduce young people with a love of music and talking about it to the radio medium to “keep the baton passing and the power of music pumping through the veins of life”! Anyone who is interested can email me directly at: jazzincontinuum@hotmail.com

Check our blog https://jazzincontinuum.wordpress.com/

Sue Thompson
Founder/Director
Jazz In Continuum