I’ve been holding out on readers of Plastic Sax. According to the website of a locally based musician, there are “forty working jazz clubs in the Kansas City area” and the city hosts “twenty jazz festivals a year.” Transport me to this magical oasis immediately! Alas, the actual count is much different.
Five “working jazz clubs” operated in the Kansas City area prior to the quarantine twelve months ago. Several other music-oriented venues in Kansas City featured at least one jazz performance every week. And about 20 restaurants and cocktail lounges regularly hired solo pianists or small combos to provide background ambience. Precisely one jazz festival was held in the Kansas City area in 2019. The Prairie Village Jazz Festival featured six hours of music by locally based artists.
Can the musician’s utopian vision be made a reality? And if so, how? The creative initiatives of many Kansas City jazz musicians during the pandemic point to a viable way to dramatically expand the slate of jazz performances.
Upon receiving the vaccine injections, I hope to supplement my patronage of conventional jazz clubs with a rich slate of legally dubious guerrilla showcases by unestablished or artistically rebellious musicians. It may not consist of 40 working jazz clubs and 20 festivals, but the prospective scenario would represent a healthy form of headway.