Volunteer-run Olympia Jazz Central celebrates 15 years

When someone thinks about Olympia music, it’s likely K Records or riot grrrl that come to mind. But, Olympia, the state’s quaint capitol city with a population of approximately 56,000 people, also has a rich tradition of jazz.

“Olympia has been a jazz town for a long time. There are a lot of really amazing jazz musicians,” said Betsy Perkins, a resident since 1992.

Perkins works as an elementary school music teacher and performing percussionist and vocalist. She is a longtime volunteer and booker for Olympia Jazz Central (OJC), a nonprofit dedicated to nurturing the local jazz community by promoting jazz and creating jazz performance, networking, and funding opportunities.

For 15 years, OJC — run entirely by volunteers like Perkins — has been a vital hub for jazz community in Olympia. Since 2009, except for a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic, OJC has hosted a regular Monday Night Jazz series at a local venue, and used their platform to sponsor and promote local music events. In 2018, the organization became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and began offering scholarships for youth in jazz.

“Jazz is a collective experience...It is about everybody being on stage and listening,” said Olympia-based jazz guitarist Vince Brown, who’s performed at and regularly attended Monday Night Jazz for years.

“I feel like Olympia Jazz Central has taken that basic concept of what it means to be a jazz musician and translated that into what does it mean to be a community member, by bringing us all together in this way...and creating that deeper community of folks who share this passion for jazz.”

More stages and better pay

For a city so full of musicians and music fans, residents say it continually lacks live music venues, particularly venues for jazz.

“[Olympia’s] struggling...to provide space for audiences and musicians and students to engage in live music, whether it's learning or listening or playing,” Perkins said.

While the reasons for this scarcity aren’t clear-cut, some blame strict city requirements that have dissuaded people from establishing performance-focused spaces, and the legacy of the all-ages punk scene Olympia in the ‘80s and ‘90s, which favored performing at DIY house shows, instead of bars, restaurants, or clubs.

“[The house show circuit] was really cool. But what that did, to a certain extent, was a lot of venues that would have existed in a town like Olympia, because it is a college town...didn't exist,” said Brown, who attended Evergreen State College in the 1980s.

Olympia Jazz Central came to fruition in 2009, at a dismal time for live jazz in the area. The High Climber Room, a smoking room in the back of The Spar restaurant and one of the only spots that regularly hosted live jazz, had changed hands and stopped presenting music. That prompted two musicians in the community, Richard Lopez and Danielle Westbrook, to hold a jazz musician’s townhall at Art House Designs, a local fine art gallery.

Lopez and Westbrook wanted to better understand what would help sustain live jazz in the community going forward. In discussions with the approximately 70 jazz musicians in attendance, the need for an organization that would present live jazz, and offer an opportunity for well-paying work for musicians in the community, became apparent.

“We’d just lost the venue, but an issue that was just as big was...making sure people were getting paid a fair wage to play music,” Westbrook said.

So, the pair, with the help of volunteers, went on to found OJC, and started presenting a Monday Night Jazz series at a bar called The Royal. From the beginning, the event has featured a rotating cast of musicians and given 100% of donations collected at the door to the performers.

As a means of helping to boost musician pay and opportunities, OJC also set out to become an engine for jazz event promotion in Olympia. Over the last 15 years, OJC has often sponsored local jazz events and jam sessions, and they’ve promoted local jazz gigs on Facebook and Meetup, a website that helps people engage with organized interest groups in their area. Notably, OJC hosts a calendar of local jazz performances on their Meetup page that is actively maintained by OJC and local musicians who contribute to the calendar.

“I get folks all the time from out of town who are here for a week...that show up at my gigs and say...‘I saw on Olympia Jazz Central that you're playing here Wednesdays and that's why I'm here,’” said Brown, who’s played weekly at Olympia’s Swing Wine Bar for 17 years.

Sustaining and evolving OJC

In 2014, The Royal changed hands and became a bar called Rhythm and Rye. Monday Night Jazz remained a popular event there until the pandemic, when the bar went out of business. For three years, the jazz series went on hiatus while OJC’s dedicated volunteers searched for a new venue.

“As a team, I think we really kick butt...we're dedicated to it and we have the sticktoitiveness [to] just roll up our sleeves and do what needs to be done,” said Lorree Gardener, who’s volunteered for OJC since its beginnings. Gardener donates about 25 hours per month to the organization, primarily collecting donations at the door during Monday Night Jazz.

In 2023, OJC returned to hosting their Monday Night Jazz series on the first, third, and fifth Mondays of the month at Eagles Hall Clubroom in downtown Olympia. Though the new location comes with some complications, namely that attendees must be members or guests of members to attend the series at this private club, Perkins said The Eagles have been very hospitable hosts. Likewise, the series has quickly reassumed the role of musical community-maker and tastemaker in Olympia, with an average of 75 people in the audience per night.

“It’s a family,” Perkins said, referring to the audience at Monday Night Jazz. “Some people even call it their ‘music church.’”

Volunteers say Monday Night Jazz is a labor of love for them too; that’s why they’ve continued to work to sustain it on the side of their full-time jobs for this long.

“We love this. I mean, we all love the live music. We are getting a benefit of having these connections with musicians and hearing amazing music, and we work really good as a team; we just divvy out the work,” said Perkins.

Along with regularly featuring Olympia-based jazz acts, Monday Night Jazz has hosted Seattle talent like Jovino Santos Neto and Ben Thomas , national names like Grammy-winner Anat Cohen , and international artists from Brazil, Italy, and Africa. Perkins, who books the series, said they’re a perfect stop for bands touring the west coast.

“You can rest assured that you're going to see a good selection of the jazz community there on a Monday night," Brown said.

"In part, it's because they've created this wonderful space that we all share, but also because we all trust Olympia Jazz Central to put on some great shows. And we know it's going to be interesting and often bringing in people we haven't heard before.”

The Eagles love jazz night too according to Tina Boardman, who bartends The Eagles Hall Clubroom on Monday nights.

“It's a godsend, really...it’s very prosperous for The Eagles,” she said. “I always celebrate the jazz nights. I dress up in fedoras and sparkly clothes.”

Supporting the future

With the continued success of Monday Night Jazz and OJC’s promotional efforts, Perkins said OJC has no plans of packing it in. Instead, they hope to expand their efforts by adding more young people to their 7-member board and providing more resources for youth interested in playing jazz.

In 2024, through their Keeping Jazz Alive scholarship program, OJC awarded six $250 scholarships to youth for use toward music camps, workshops, private lessons, or instrument repairs. They hope to award many more in the future. Youth are also encouraged to attend Monday Night Jazz at The Eagles Hall, which is all-ages until 9 p.m.

OJC is also hoping to build more partnerships with local businesses who might be open to hosting live music, so they can expand on their programming and start a regular all-ages jam session.

“It would be good to have live music every night in Olympia,” Perkins said. “People are just really hungry to play with each other and audiences are really hungry to listen.”