Manhattan music surge for APAP....

The Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) convenes in Manhattan this weekend, demonstrating the greatest health and resilience of any sector of the jazz-new music economy. Last year more than 4000 attendees registered to schmooze, exhibit, theorize and opine on panels, take in showcase performances and make deals with musicians eager for gigs.

The talent search is paramount, and among the numerous music showcases in conjunction with APAP all around Manhattan January 9 - 13, three especially stand out: Winterjazzfest, the Brooklyn Jazz Underground Festival and globalFEST 2009. Talent to spare!

With the continuing decline of the recording business as it's been known, live performance is increasingly the most lucrative income stream for most musicians. The members of APAP are mostly curators of US and Canadian non-profit arts centers who recognize what's happening when they hear it, book bands if possible in cooperation to allow for low-budget artists' tours, and subsequently promote new music trends, sounds, acts, bands.

APAP this year fills the breach of any non-profit jazz-and-beyond conference left by the demise of the International Association for Jazz Education last spring, which had been hosting thousands of teachers, students and broader music industry representatives for weekend-long events every-other year in big midtown Manhattan hotels (the off-years in Toronto and Long Beach evidently did them in), and the failure of entrepreneurial Jazz Improv magazine's hopes of funding for a second (annual?) New York jazz fair to materialize. The APAP attendees don't have a jazz-particular mission, but they do lean more to improv and vernacular musics with a degree of commercial profile than the people and sounds at the annual Chamber Music America conference, also being held in NYC, Jan 15 - 18.
http://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/2009/01/manhattan_jazz_surge_for_apap.html