Trouble at JazzTimes

On June 8th, JazzTimes, a monthly jazz magazine with a circulation of 100,000, posted this short message on its website, confirming suspicions that the magazine is in serious financial trouble.

Rumors about JazzTimes' demise began when the magazine began to lay off employees, notified freelance contributors that their pay would be held, and refrained from sending its June '09 issue to printers. What the magazine's website calls a "temporary suspension" of publication looks to observant jazz fans like the collapse of another pillar of the industry's infrastructure. In 2008, the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) crumbled, and in April of this year it became evident that there would be no JVC Jazz Festival in New York this year.

As Darcy James Argue points out in a recent post, two fronts on which the jazz community continues to thrive (at least in New York), are the free jazz scene, and the jazz-meets-indie rock scene. The Vision Festival, in it's 14th year, began on June 9th and continues its experimental music programming through the 15th. The Search and Restore series will present a top-tier lineup of progressive jazz at Brooklyn's indie-rock dominated Northside Music and Arts Festival.

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