April is Philly Jazz Month. Mid Atlantic Arts is celebrating with concerts and education opportunities

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The City of Brotherly Love’s jazz heritage will be celebrated throughout the entire month of April, bringing educational opportunities to Philadelphia’s youth and concerts around the city.

Philly Jazz Month will celebrate and provide platforms for artists and organizations to bring awareness — both locally and abroad — and connect people with the jazz scene to share its history and encourage others to participate.

Ernest Stuart, program director of jazz at Mid Atlantic Arts, is no stranger to the city’s jazz scene. Growing up across the Delaware River, Stuart often took PATCO for summer jazz programs as a budding trombonist before attending Temple University.

“Back in that day, you could still walk around with your horn and just find places to play around Philly,” Stuart said. “Just walk into places and people see you got a horn and they’ll ask you if you want to play.”

Over the years, Stuart played with John Legend, Lauryn Hill, Seal and Bright Eyes and created the Center City Jazz Festival in 2012. That’s around when he began to lay the groundwork for what was originally envisioned as “Philly Jazz Week,” which would’ve happened in the fall. While planning that out, he met Valerie Gay.

“Once she became chief cultural officer, we sat down to talk about what I had been planning and it just was a natural conversation,” Stuart said. “We were trying to figure out how to incorporate Jazz Appreciation Month and she was trying to make an effort to update that and sort of change the perception around that.”

Roughly $30,000 has been given to local artists and organizations to create jazz-inspired cultural programs throughout April. Philly Jazz Month also partners with the School District of Philadelphia to send artists to local schools to work with students and give clinics. Stuart said the aim is to “put it within a cultural context that is relevant to them.”

“Hopefully they understand the importance of being a Philadelphian and this incredible legacy that they’re carrying forward,” Stuart said. “We hope to just put Philly and jazz in the same sentence as many times as possible so that people recognize that Philly is a jazz city. Hopefully, that will inspire them to just dig a little bit deeper around their own neighborhoods to see where it might be happening.”

The full schedule of events and concerts during Philly Jazz Month can be found here. Stuart said there are several he’s looking forward to checking out:

• Orrin Evans’ 50th Birthday Celebration: April 4, 7:30 p.m. at Chris’ Jazz Café, 1421 Sansom St.
• East Passyunk Jazz Crawl: April 5, noon to 6 p.m.
• Roscoe Mitchell and Tyshawn Sorey: April 18, 8 p.m. at Solar Myth, 1131 S. Broad St.
• Terell Stafford Quintet: April 18, 7:30 p.m. at Notsolatin, 1440 W. Ritner St.
• Germantown Jazz Festival: April 25–27

Philly Jazz Month will officially kick off April 2 during a celebration at City Hall in the Mayor’s Reception Room from 5 to 7 p.m.

This year’s celebration was organized by Creative Philadelphia and Mid Atlantic Arts with additional support from PECO and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.