Jazz Appreciation Month

To mark the centennial of Chicago jazz-musician Benny Goodman, "The King of Swing," the museum will offer a variety of public discussions, tools and music oriented programs to highlight the life, times and cultural diplomacy of Goodman and jazz artists who performed with him. Goodman is also featured on the 2009 JAM poster, available free to the public.

Museum events will also commemorate the impending release of the new Smithsonian Folkways Recordings’ 110-track boxed set Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology. The anthology and accompanying book with photographs covers the history of jazz from its birth to its current place in global music.

The museum launched JAM in 2001 as an annual event that pays tribute to jazz both as a historic and living American art form. It has since grown to include celebrations in all 50 states and 40 countries. In celebrating JAM, the museum joins with a diverse group of organizations, institutions, corporations, associations and federal agencies that have provided financial and in-kind support, as well as organizing programs and outreach of their own.

"Jazz is a truly American style of music that has played an important role in our heritage," said Brent D. Glass, museum director. "Through the Smithsonian’s Jazz Appreciation Month activities, we will highlight jazz and its history and how the genre has an important function in global diplomacy."

The Smithsonian operates the world’s most comprehensive set of jazz programs and the National Museum of American History is home to jazz collections that include 100,000 pages of Duke Ellington’s unpublished music and such objects as Ella Fitzgerald’s famous red dress, Dizzy Gillespie’s angled trumpet, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme manuscript and Goodman’s clarinet. The museum has reopened after a two-year renovation.

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