New Jersey Jazz Society

On Saturday, October 18, 2025, there was live jazz on 12 corners in Manhattan — from Harlem to the financial district. The musicians were jazz studies majors from several colleges and universities including Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, William Paterson, Oberlin, SUNY Purchase, and The New School. The event was called Sidewalk Swing, and it was created by Ava Preston,...

The future of jazz was on full display on a rainy Saturday, May 9, at Ross Farm in Basking Ridge, NJ.

David Becker, President of Ross Farm and guitarist/educator Dave Stryker, for the second consecutive year, presented groups of emerging jazz artists. This year it was: the Jazz House Kids Ambassadors Combo, directed by tenor saxophonist Mike Lee; the Montclair State Ja...

Pianist/composer Randy Weston preferred to be known as a storyteller, rather than as a jazz musician. That storytelling tradition, said alto saxophonist/flutist T.K. Blue, emanated from the griots and jeliws — the oral historians who kept the stories of Africa alive, stories that Weston told through his music. Although born in the United States to Jamaican/Panamanian and Amer...