NJMH featured in The NY Times

  To: Listings/Critics/Features
From: Jazz Promo Services
Press Contact: Jim Eigo, jazzpromo@earthlink.net
http://jazzpromoservices.com/

The National Jazz Museum in Harlem
104 East 126th Street, #2C
New York, NY 10035
212 348-8300
http://www.jmih.org/

The NY Times features multi-media, audio and an article celebrating our historic acquisition of the SAVORY COLLECTION.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/arts/music/17jazz.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

There is additional material on our website (http://www.jmih.org) as well.

  We will be featuring the SAVORY COLLECTION as part of our Tuesday evening JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS series, held from 7:00 – 8:30PM at our Visitors Center, 104 E. 126th Street, NY, NY 10035.

JAZZ FOR CURIOUS LISTENERS
September – THE SAVORY COLLECTION
Exploring a buried treasure- NEW sounds from 1935-1940

   
September 7 – You Won’t Believe It – An Overview
September 14 – Tenor Madness – Lester Young/Coleman Hawkins/Chu Berry/Herschel Evans
September 21 – Trumpet Titans – Louis Armstrong/Roy Eldridge/Harry James/Bunny Berigan
September 28 – Jam Sessions – Benny Goodman/Bobby Hackett/Lionel Hampton/Slim and Slam

  For Immediate Release

  National Jazz Museum in Harlem acquireS long-lost COLLECTION OF Recordings by AMERICAN Jazz Icons
Over 100 hours of live performances capture the golden age of jazz and include
Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and more…

***

(New York, NY – August 17, 2010) – The National Jazz Museum in Harlem (NJMH) today announced the acquisition of a historic collection of never-before-heard recordings, including live performances of great American Jazz icons from 1935-1941.  The collection of 975 aluminum and vinyl discs, over 100 hours of material, was created by William Savory, a recording engineer and Harvard-educated physicist. Savory worked as at a radio transcription service in New York between 1935 and 1941 and used the equipment his job afforded him to record hundreds of hours of material directly off the radio.

“Finding this collection after years of persistent searching was like finding the Holy Grail of Jazz,” says Loren Schoenberg, Executive Director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. “It’s an incredibly fertile find in terms of programming and the advancement of jazz scholarship, one that we will treasure—and share with our audiences—for years to come.”

The collection includes live performances by jazz icons Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Lionel Hampton, Fats Waller, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and more, as well as classical broadcasts including Toscanini, Ormandy, and Kristen Flagstad. [Editor’s Note: See below for full list of content] The quality of the discs is extraordinary for the time, as most jazz enthusiasts in the 1930s did not have the access to professional equipment that Savory enjoyed.

The National Jazz Museum in Harlem’s Executive Director Loren Schoenberg discovered the collection after a 24 year cultivation that started with his meeting William Savory in 1980. Savory died in 2004 and Schoenberg acquired the discs in April, 2010 for the museum through Savory’s heir, Gene Savory, of Malta, Illinois.

The search for, and cultivation of, this collection is parallel to the Museum’s commitment to preserve the history of Jazz, while nurturing its evolution for future generations.  It also comes at a fortuitous time in the Museum’s development as it is currently preparing to build a permanent home at “Mart 125,” in Harlem, New York—the historic row in Upper Manhattan which stands directly across from the famed Apollo Theatre on Harlem’s fabled 125th Street. The Museum plans to make the collection available to audiences at their current facility by appointment only, and through its September Tuesday evening Jazz For Curious Listeners and Saturday Panel series.  Check the Museum’s website <http://www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org/index.php>  for more details.  

About the National Jazz Museum in Harlem
The National Jazz Museum in Harlem celebrates the neighborhood that has nurtured jazz and the many musicians that have lived and worked there. Duke Ellington, Benny Carter, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday – all of their unique sounds reverberated throughout these fabled streets. Their legacy continues as the jazz musicians of today have also found a home in Harlem for their own contemporary sounds. The National Jazz Museum in Harlem is dedicated to fostering this spirit -the music as a living, breathing entity that looks as far into the future as it does into the past.

For more information, please visit www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org <http://www.jazzmuseuminharlem.org/>