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We are two
organizations with a common purpose. The Seattle Repertory
Jazz Orchestra is a 17-piece big band that has been
performing in the Seattle area since 1995. Seattle Jazz
Orchestra is a Washington State nonprofit corporation formed
in late 1998 to provide secure, continuing support for the
Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra.
The mission of the SRJO is to present the finest works of America's greatest jazz composers,
including rare and unpublished pieces and newly commissioned works by living composers.
Our mission is also to provide educational opportunities for young people to learn about jazz
and to hear first-rate professional jazz musicians both in concert and in personal learning experiences.
The SRJO provides authentic performances of great works of jazz,
drawing on the entire 100-year history of big band jazz.
By combining the talents of the region's outstanding jazz
artists, the SRJO seeks to educate Puget Sound-area
audiences in jazz as a musical art form, and to sustain and
increase the appreciation of jazz.
SJO's mission is to give the
SRJO a secure existence and to enable the SRJO to perform
widely and frequently. This means raising money
(contributions and grants) and connecting to the community
through an active board of directors.
Artistic Mission
The three components of SJO/SRJO's
artistic mission all focus on jazz as a musical art form.
Artist Development.
The Seattle/King County region has extremely talented
professional jazz musicians of all ages (including
students). SJO exists primarily to create and develop the
occasions for professional performance by these musicians.
The Board is committed to paying these musicians at the same
rate that Seattle Symphony musicians are paid for rehearsals
and performances. Also, SJO and SRJO promote racial and
gender diversity in their personnel at all levels (board,
performers, and staff).
Audience Enjoyment
and Education. Unlike symphony, opera, ballet, and
chamber music (all European in origin), jazz is the
musical art form that originated in America. Other
metropolitan areas (such as New York and Washington, DC)
have long-established and highly successful repertory jazz
orchestras. SJO aims to establish SRJO as the region's
enduring professional jazz orchestra, bringing jazz classics
to regional audiences through entertaining and educational
performances.
Jazz as Art Form.
Part of SJO/SRJO's mission is to restore lost-to-print
compositions and arrangements to live performance, by the
painstaking strategy of transcribing them, note for note,
from famous (and sometimes scratchy) recordings from the
1920s and 1930s. Typically, one or two of the pieces
performed at each SRJO concert are premiere performances of
transcriptions (by Brockman) of classic works that audience
members could not have had prior occasion to hear in live
performance. |
