10 Jazz Resources You Should Follow On Twitter

Back in October I wrote a blog post featuring 10 Jazz Musicians You Should Follow On Twitter. I promised that it would be the start of an “ongoing, if irregular, series”. So far it’s been more irregular than ongoing!

Today I officially make the series ongoing, but with a twist. Instead of focusing on jazz musicians I thought I’d shine the spotlight on some of the amazing jazz resources on Twitter. From radio shows to writers to presenting agencies to bloggers, all of these Tweeps are must-follows for musicians, jazz or otherwise. Some of them are, indeed, musicians. All of them are some of the sharpest and most helpful people on the network and I’m consistently blown away at their thoughts and entertained and educated by their presence.

Twitter has it’s own version of this, called #followfriday, where users suggest their favorite friends to follow. This is my blogcentric way of doing the same thing.

Once again, this is by no means an exhaustive list. There are plenty of great folks I had to leave off to get the list down to 10. I’ll get back around to part 2 of this list a well. But here’s a good start, in no particular order:

1. @ElementsOfJazz is Donna M., Twitter’s Queen of Jazz! Donna is one of the biggest supporters of the music I’ve met on the internet. She tweets and retweets about jazz and jazz musicians, and Blip’s music from real, live, LIVING jazz musicians regularly. If you’re a jazz fan, you gotta know Donna!

2. @accujazzradio is Lucas Gillian, the programmer of AccuJazz Radio. Lucas programs dozens of channels of jazz radio on the internet. If you like to have music on while you work or surf, there’s enough here to keep you occupied for years! Plus, Lucas has a great blog and is a jazz drummer, so his tweets are informative and informed.

3. @jasondcrane is Jason Crane, the host of a wonderful interview show called The Jazz Session. Jason’s interviews are amazingly candid and in depth and get to the heart of what it means to be a jazz musician and how folks go about it. Some of his recent interviewees have been Sonny Rollins, Darcy James Argue, Sam Rivers and Paquito D’Rivera…whoa!

4. @peterhum is Peter Hum, writer for the Ottowa Citizen and writer of one of the best jazz blog’s out there, Jazzblog.ca. Peter was one of the first jazz bloggers I came across and he set the bar high for the rest of us! His writing is insightful, witty, informative and creative. He writes about musicians, records, the life of the jazz musician and his own exploits as a jazz pianist. Add him to your blogroll now!

5. @blogsupreme is Patrick Jarenwattananon, NPR’s resident jazz blogger and writer of A Blog Supreme. Like Peter, Patrick writes amazing pieces about all facets of the jazz world. And since he’s part of NPR he has some pretty crazy access!

6. @nextbop is Sebastien Helary and Justin Wee of Nextbop.com. These two 23-year-old Montreal residents have created what is quickly become THE portal for the new generation of jazz musicians. They have taken it upon themselves to educate their own generation, who they sees as woefully lacking in jazz understanding and appreciation. Check out their radio stream on the website for consistently amazing music!

7. @checkoutjazz is Josh Jackson, jazz host at WBGO, one of the nations great jazz radio stations. His show The Checkout features interviews and performances with jazz musicians that are on the same level as Jason Crane’s. They have also teamed up with NPR recently for some live streaming concerts from the Village Vanguard from Dave Douglas, Billy Hart and the JD Allen Trio, to name a few.

8. @SmallsJazzClub is the twitter home of the musician-owned Manhattan club Smalls. Home to the finest young jazzers in NYC for years, they started live-streaming and archiving many of their shows and have collected an amazing treasure trove of live jazz. Check out both the live streams and the archives, but be careful – you might get lost down the rabbit hole!

9. @curtjazz is Curtis Davenport, host of Curt’s Jazz Cafe. Curtis programs one of the best internet jazz radio shows around and is a staunch support of LIVING jazz musicians. We’re fortunate to have people like Curtis out there to champion the music. He’s also recently started blogging.

10. @JazzWax is Marc Myers, who writes the #1 jazz blog on the internet, Jazz Wax. He regularly profiles jazz musicians, reviews records, and conducts multi-part interviews that are fascinating and incredibly in-depth.

As I said, there are so many more wonderful people support the cause of jazz music and I was only able to scratch the surface in this first list. I’ll come back to the topic soon and hip you to some of the other wonderful folks out there. But by following these 10 you’ll get a boat-load of great jazz information!

Feel free to add your favorites in the comments.