A new hole in the safety net for jazz musicians: In an e-mail message sent February 18th 2009, Jazz Foundation of America executive director Wendy Oxenhorn reports:

“Our magnificent E*TRADE Emergency Housing Fund has allowed us to
pay rents and mortgages all these years when elderly musicians fell ill, and
when Katrina struck. Because of this fund we have never lost anyone to
homelessness or eviction in the past 8 years! What ETRADE did for us all
these years was amazing but we have just been told that they can no longer
support our program going forward. Without their contribution our Emergency
Fund is now at an all time low.”

Jazz musicians in the United States almost never have pensions and seldom get health insurance through employers (I bet that’s the case for most American rap, rock, pop, polka, folk, country and probably the majority of classical musicians, too). At the JFA’s Great Night In Harlem fundraiser held August 29, 2001, R. Jarrett Lilien, then Chief Operating Officer of E*Trade Financial and now President of the Jazz Foundation, announced the establishment of a standing fund to provide assistance to musicians in need.

The JFA claims that since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, more than 3500 musicians have been helped with these monies. With E*Trade bowing out, the JFA seeks a new $150,000 sponsor for its housing fund.

Housing is only a part of the JFA’s larger mission, which also includes pro bono health care, employment assistance, instrument provisions and jazz education. Despite the series of crisis facing jazz musicians and the jazz recording industry over the past eight years, the JFA has maintained a high profile and raised millions of dollars, spending very little on administration (it keeps small offices in the Musicians Union building in midtown Manhattan).

Oxenhorn and Lilien have been joined by a not so small and still growing number of other exceptionally generous individuals — most notably Agnes Varis and a retinue of doctors associated with Englewood Hospital and Medical Center — to expand activities in the face of increasing need.

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- Visit the Jazz Foundation Of America online.

- More organizations that support jazz.
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