Award winning musicians Jazz Yazz Ahmed, Arturo O’Farrill, Oscar Hernandez, Michele Rosewoman, and Maria Schneider speak to how COVID has effected everything from the future of their celebrated large ensembles to what’s changed within their own creative practices.       

Just when big bands were making a comeback in Jazz, COVID19 slammed the doors to anywhere they could seek to find an audience. Before COVID, Jazz lovers could find any number of innovative large ensembles making remarkable headway in this art form as they brought new music admirers around the world.

As communities into themselves, large ensembles live to create, rehearse, record, and play before discerning fans. With the second wave of the pandemic setting in, and the country again locking down making any kind live performance impossible, veteran big band leaders are anxious about whether they will even have a chance to play at all in 2021.

Five internationally renown artists face a future where organizing their composing and arranging is only possible when virtualized, and the practice of creativity becomes anything but “normal.”  Yazz Ahmed, Arturo O’Farrill, Oscar Hernandez, Michele Rosewoman, and Maria Schneider, speak to being creative musicians figuring out how to move forward in the artistic vacuum produced by such remarkably disruptive times in the first part off this three part series.