Jazz breaking news: Streams of consciousness as Search & Restore get the music out there in New York city and on the web

The metropolis’ creative jazz and improv scene has much in common with the UK and wider European jazz community and shares many similarities beyond London with the resurgent Birmingham and Manchester city scenes.

With musicians and the jazz industry in general bracing themselves for further turbulence especially in Europe as the cold winds of the economic downturn continue to batter it’s not all doom and gloom. In London small new creative venues and jazz clubs have opened up, most recently Blue Train, while other relative newcomers have continued to develop particularly Café Oto, Hideaway, and Servant’s Jazz Quarters in London, Matt and Phred’s in Manchester, Dempseys in Cardiff, the Jazz Bar in Edinburgh, Yardbird in Birmingham, and on the festival scene there with Harmonic and Mostly Jazz.

Ahead of Winterjazzfest, which takes place next month in New York, featuring Marc Ribot, Nels Cline, Rudresh Mahanthappa, David Murray, Cindy Blackman, Vijay Iyer, Mostly Other People Do The Killing and many more gigging at venues such as (Le) Poisson Rouge and Kenny’s Castaways, Search and Restore founder Adam Schatz, a company at the heart of where it’s at on a fast emerging scene, talks to Jazzwise

How is Search & Restore making a difference on the NYC jazz and improvising scene?

Adam Schatz: “From the beginning our mission has been to create more opportunities for artists to perform, and do so in a way that is cohesive with attracting new audiences. Search & Restore presents the music we love with an attitude that is welcoming to new listeners, and attractive to current fans. By building searchandrestore.com, an intricate but accessible web of live videos and artist pages that we add on to every day, actively representing the scene as it exists in New York, connected together by the talented artists who are exponentially versatile, taking part in so much more than just their own projects. That sense of community and collaboration has never before been represented online and we hope that by doing so we can attract many more people to the music, as well as give current fans a way to stay connected and discover new artists easier.”

Your second major fundraising campaign has just been launched. Why do you feel the need to do this and what do you hope to achieve with the cash raised?

AS: “Fundraising is the least fun but most necessary part of running a non-proft. Especially being such a young organisation, we’re dependent on the support from those around us so that we can grow and expand our reach. By using crowd-sourcing platforms like Kickstarter, we’re able to make our fundraising a public and engaging effort that actively identifies a global audience of supporters who are interested in contributing to what we’ve got going on. Now that we’ve delivered the new website based on our last year’s fundraising promise, we’re finally able to start applying to bigger grant funding and other avenues of fundraising that are less public, because we’ve been able to display a commitment to our goals as well as a brief but impressive financial history.”

Globally, in cities such as London, Paris, Berlin and Tokyo, who do you see as simpático organisations that share the S&R approach?

AS: “I have yet to come across another organisation globally that is as focused as we are on spreading and growing this community, but I know there are other like minded organisers who throw festivals and encourage the development of improvised music in every one of those places. I think Search & Restore can take on the role of connecting the dots, bringing together the people connected to this music from around the world. A next step for the website is to create outposts for scenes everywhere outside of New York, so we can go to Amsterdam, Paris, and so on, and spend some time filming the local artists and integrating their footage into the website, so that when you go to the videos or artist page you can sort by city, and then see who plays with each other across country lines. Finding collaborators on an organisational level in each of those places is essential to making that happen. Another logical step is for us to bring our Undead Jazzfest to different counties as well that may not have gotten a chance to host a big festival dedicated to this music, where we can bring over some artists from the states and combine their amazing music with local talent wherever we go. There are some really great festivals that do that already, but I think and hope that we can make it a more frequent happening. As far as the people I know globally who are doing great things, Reiner Michalke and his Moers Festival never fail to impress, and the Bimhuis in Amsterdam is always presenting amazing music and festivals.”

Tell me a little about the learning curve, if that’s the correct term, during the development so far of S&R?

AS: “I’ve always said I’m making this up as I go along. I take it upon myself to represent the organisation with my positive energy and hunger for discovery, in the hopes that that can rub off on and attract new audiences. So that’s always going through my head. But the organisation was not an overnight success, everything we’ve done has been a slow build. I started in late 2007 throwing double bills at the Knitting Factory, which led to me throwing shows in other venues as well, which led to my involvement in the Winter Jazzfest, which led to the founding of the Undead Jazzfest and the acquisition of our 501(c)3 nonprofit status, which led to our fundraising and the new website. Every time we reach a next level, I just take a minute and let my brain go to town and see what I can come up with, how many new ways can we get this music to people and be creative with its presentation, given our current place as an organisation.”

By documenting the scene via filmed performance are you appealing to disenchanted YouTube users, and people who used to buy videocassettes and DVDs, or offering a more alternative in-depth approach?

AS: “The answer is both. The new website took us so long to build because it’s deceptively in depth, it looks accessible and easy to use, yet it connects artists to the audiences in so many different ways. Because of that, the target audience for the website can be a bunch of different archetypes, and I can say that with honesty. If you are a long-time fan and scholar of the scene, the website is just an additional exciting way to get to know the artists you love and discover new ones, as well as stay up to date with whose performing in New York. If you’ve never heard this music before, the website is an invaluable point of discovery, a way to see an artist perform in a bunch of different settings, and to easily connect the dots between artists in a way you never could on any one artist’s website or at any one performance. It allows the curious listener a chance to have fun engaging with all of this music, and then go see the artists live and buy their records.”

How do you feel about live streaming concerts, can this work from an entrepreneurial point of view?

AS: “Live streaming has a lot of potential. Most of the times I’ve seen it the video quality is still too low for my taste, but in a few years I think consumer live-stream potential can be really great, maybe even sooner than that. The important question is how do you monetise it. If you’re blasting an artist’s performance to 4,000 more people than are at the concert itself, the artist deserves compensation for that. So, be it through finding a sponsor for the stream or by charging a small viewing fee, there are ways to make that happen. We plan on experimenting with it in future festivals, but it does require additional funding, even just to set up the cameras and streaming capabilities, and I think we can use the website over the next year to really build an online community for this stuff so that when we do go live with streaming, we'll know there are fans around the world ready to check it out.”

How do you gauge how musicians and the jazz community in general feel about what you are hoping to achieve?

AS: “I talk to them. Over the last year I threw shows with almost 300 artists, and I do my best to get out and see as much music as possible. By making our plans public through these fundraisers, we can hear back directly from artists and fans about their feelings. There will always be criticisms and we certainly take those into account, but for the most part we receive a genuine gratitude and excited energy for our efforts, because just simply trying to encourage and develop the scene on this big a level is a pretty big deal. It feels that way, and it’s incredibly hard because no one’s tried this before, so there’s no direct competition but we do have to make it up as we go along and hope we get it right.”

– Stephen Graham