Stepping Forward Together
Jazz in the Berkshires became a registered 501(c)3 in 2022. Our mission is to be a contributing force in building cultural diversity, art education, and economic growth in the Berkshires. We are dedicated to the awareness, preservation, and advancement of the uniquely African American art form known to all as jazz, which has evolved into a collection of various styles, including straight-ahead, fusion, Latin, be-bop, smooth, jazz blues, swing, Dixieland, Afro-Cuban, chamber jazz, and more. We bring to the Berkshires both top-name performers and new entrants from the various stylings.
Jazz in the Berkshires Director Daphne Bolden, a decades-long jazz aficionado who lives in Williamstown, recognized the need for robust jazz programming in the Berkshires. As a result, she reached out to the Clark Art Institute to partner with Jazz in the Berkshires to create an accessible performance venue for everyone—including the thousands of students in the Berkshires, from college to grade-school level, both in public and private schools.
From the very start, our programming has received extraordinary support, with standing-room only audiences. And we have attracted so many young people! We plan to expand our single-night concerts to multi-day festivals over the next few years, and we are reaching out to the music-loving community for monetary support through donations, grants, and sponsorships to reach that goal.
Why support Jazz in the Berkshires? Funding for this endeavor will only increase the exposure of the Berkshires as a location for arts and entertainment locally and worldwide. Benefits to securing Jazz in the Berkshires as an annual event include the following:
- Raising awareness of one of America’s greatest art forms to a wider audience.
- Adding greater cultural diversity to audiences in the Berkshires
- Giving young people access to live performance by some of the greatest musical artists in the world.
- Attracting a new source of tourism.
- Bringing much-desired additional revenue to northern Berkshire towns of North Adams and Williamstown via hotels, motels, Airbnbs, eateries, and shopping.
What is Jazz in the Berkshires and why is it relevant? Jazz is a unifying art form. It crosses economic, racial, and cultural divides. The music is ALIVE. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., during his opening address at the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival:
“Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph… And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith.
In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these.”