Let the record state: Jazz music has not always been a gray-haired endeavor. Somewhere on the other side of the U.S. moon landing, a “swinging” tune denoted young, vivacious couples doing their eponymous thing on a herringbone dance floor.
Times change. In recent decades, jazz has not been associated with popular music or its corresponding youth movements. The genre’s largest clubs are often sit-down dinner restaurants. Audience makeup resembles that at the symphony hall. Listeners flock to classic Blue Note albums instead of contemporary trailblazers.
Jazz musicians themselves, a generationally diverse crew of intellectual night owls, never asked for this way of things. But it’s the situation in which many, especially those who reach the music’s highest ranks, find themselves.
On the southwest corner of Seattle’s Occidental Square, all that is shifting. Every Monday at 7:30 p.m., the newest generation of jazz listeners forms a line that stretches toward the corner of First Avenue South and South Main Street. The queue originates from the basement entrance to the Seattle Jazz Fellowship, the nonprofit music venue that’s transformed Pioneer Square nightlife since moving there in early 2024.
Claire Moore, 27, the fellowship’s multidisciplinary manager, bartender and sound tech, says the venue’s Monday night free-to-attend jam sessions began like any other in town, a modest crew of jazz musicians trading solos over the Great American Songbook. That changed in November 2024, when local content creator and influencer Michelle Villafuerte visited and then posted about the music. “It blew up after that,” says Moore. “It went from 20 musicians to full lines out the door, many of them college-aged.”
If there’s anything shocking about the Monday night jams, it’s this: the age makeup. Despite the popularity — and all-around excellence — of Seattle’s annual Earshot Jazz Festival, those shows don’t boast much Gen Z attendance. The same can be said of Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley, The Triple Door and The Royal Room. After Villafuerte’s post, the Monday night fellowship became a hotbed for high schoolers and college kids. Because it’s still jazz, older cats abound as well. This is that rare cultural event with a true all-ages audience, skewing young, certainly, but spread all over the spectrum, with everyone listening intently. Don’t look too hard for a recent analog. There isn’t one.
Villafuerte lives a few blocks from the fellowship. She discovered it one evening while walking her dog. “I thought it was so beautiful,” she says, “and Mondays were free. I was like, ‘Why isn’t this place packed?’” She recognized fellowship founder Thomas Marriott from prior gigs at the nearby Frederick Holmes Gallery and decided to post about the experience and the quality of the music. “I kept posting about them because I appreciate what (the fellowship) brings to Pioneer Square and the community,” says Villafuerte. “I also love jazz!”
Judging by body language and a lack of visible phone use, the fellowship’s young fans seem to have a legitimate interest in this music. It’s hard not to when each Monday begins with a set from the blisteringly proficient house band, made up of Marriott on trumpet, D’Vonne Lewis on drums, relative young gun Trevor Ford, 31, on bass and Cornish instructor Tim Kennedy on keys. These opening tunes are reason enough to attend, proof that the language of jazz is not just alive and well in the Emerald City but reaching regularly scheduled epiphanies. Marriott provides the quartet’s brightest fireworks, but Lewis — and this can be said for an unfathomable number of Seattle groups — is the key, shifting feels at improbable speed, playing under and over the meter, holding it down in all respects.
The house band provides inspiration aplenty for the follow-up jam session, in which Marriott calls on available musicians to form impromptu groups. This takes some level of jazz competence (knowing the complete chordal progressions to a standard, having the chops to solo over it) and more than a bit of courage. On a recent weekend, one player so inclined was Luca Morales, 18, a baritone saxophonist from Everett High School, now attending Bellevue College. Morales learned about the ellowship jam on Instagram but, after seeing the size of the crowd in online photos, got intimidated. Eventually, he made his way down — and fit right in. Seeing him harmonize the melody on “There Will Never Be Another You,” his initial hesitance seems firmly in the rearview. “I’m not really super social,” says Morales. “But I’ve been coming here every week for a bit. I’m actually playing in a big band this winter with some people I met here.”
For Morales, the main lure was the fellowship jam’s all-ages nature. There aren’t many after-dark events in Seattle open to young jazz musicians. This one’s authenticity — and its lack of cover charge — has brought the youth out in force. Two of Morales’ generational peers, sitting near the front of the room, were Moss Wallas, 16, and Ethan Elliott, 17, both students at Ballard High School. Like Morales, Wallas heard about the jam on Instagram. A singer in the vocal jazz ensemble at her school, she thought she’d check it out, and invited Elliott along. There aren’t many Seattle venues where teenagers can see this music on the cheap, much less surrounded by an audience of their own age. Asked about her jazz leanings, Wallas says, “I listen to Chet (Baker) and Ella (Fitzgerald).” She’ll likely come back.
Older attendees have been gazing at the newfound audience with a small sense of wonder. But jazz is a community-based art, and Seattle’s old guard is all for it. “Anybody who thinks this music is cool and wants to support it, that’s great,” says pianist Eric Verlinde, who led the Tuesday night Owl N’ Thistle jam session for almost 20 years. “People want culture. They want stuff you can’t get from apps or from your phone. We have that here.”
Another regular from the Owl sessions, drummer Beri Puhlovski, 69, was the jam’s elder statesman on a recent Monday. “I don’t remember any jams this young,” he says, “because lots of bars and pubs have an age limit. The energy here is fantastic.”
It all comes back to this. Energy. In a city where musicians have long struggled to make a living, in a genre of historical precarity, jazz jams can sometimes feel like an insider’s obligatory rites, a dusty tradition older than time itself. The local scene is rich with talent, but Seattle’s jazz corps has long operated without the expectation of an invested, nonmusician audience, particularly on weekdays. Improbably, one Monday at a time, this is changing. Puhlovski feels it all coming together. How could he not? He grins across the crowd and says, “This music is for everyone. The more the merrier.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com ’
