In 2023, the prolific jazz author Ted Gioia wrote about jazz’s perception among young people in his popular Substack newsletter.
“I’m almost ready to engage in spontaneous Primal Scream Therapy when a youngster pipes in with: 'Jazz? You mean that old kind of music,” he wrote.
If Gioia came to Seattle, he might feel less bleak: There’s an emerging scene of jazz musicians and presenters in their 20s and 30s revolving around a pop-up jazz concert series called The Goodbye Look.
Once or twice a month, The Goodbye Look curates genre-bending and listening-focused jazz events at local venues. The group books world-renowned jazz artists and highlights serious musicianship, while also creating approachable and unique experiences that welcome fresh listeners into the fold.
“I feel like Goodbye Look has definitely exposed me to a lot of different kinds of jazz, which is really fun,” said 32-year-old Erin Antovich, who is a sales specialist at REI and has attended several of the series’ shows.
“I feel like it is an inviting and welcoming space to anyone who wants to go. I've even brought some friends along who aren't really into jazz at all.”
On Nov. 24, The Goodbye Look will present a release show for the debut album of local jazz-inspired quartet EarthtoneSkytone at The Recreational Psychoacoustics Lab, a music studio and multi-use community space.
Appealing to a new generation
The origins of The Goodbye Look series, which began in 2022, go back to 2014.
At that time, co-founder Peter Graham, who grew up in Bellevue, Washington, was living in Los Angeles after graduating from Occidental College. He'd become a regular at The Blue Whale, an intimate jazz club in the city’s Little Tokyo district.
Formerly a jazz pianist himself, Graham couldn’t get enough of the club’s environment, diverse audience, and the up-close and personal way he could listen to some of the freshest artists in modern jazz.
Graham said he was used to seeing jazz in supper clubs or through nonprofit events in Seattle, where audiences skewed older and white. He always found the lack of young people in the audience curious and unfortunate.
“Then going to The Blue Whale, I started seeing an audience of jazz listeners, passionate jazz listeners, engaged jazz listeners...that were incredibly diverse,” Graham said.
"The idea that there was this many different types of people interested in going to a jazz show — I really hadn't seen that before."
Graham eventually relocated back to Seattle, and during the pandemic, The Blue Whale shut down. It’s closure inspired Graham to act.
After a brief flirtation with the idea of moving back to L.A. and reopening The Blue Whale himself, he decided to start something like it in Seattle: The Goodbye Look.
Build it and they will come
Since 2022, The Goodbye Look has been putting on pop-up jazz shows, mostly at Bad Bar in Queen Anne. According to Graham’s estimation, their audience has been largely 24-to-36 year olds.
Graham, and the other co-founders Federico Rozenberg, Shane McCabe, and Ajay Mehta, have strategically recruited these younger audiences by creating sonically inclusive and special musical experiences geared toward existing and new jazz fans.
The Goodbye Look, drawing on their connection to L.A.-based label Minaret Records, frequently present musicians from L.A. and New York, as well as Seattle—and most artists are under 40 years old. While many performers embody the more canonical “modern jazz” sound, The Goodbye Look’s booking overall embraces a broad, genre-melding jazz aesthetic.
Graham’s booking strategy reflects his hypothesis that younger people’s musical tastes are shaped by YouTube and streaming platforms. With these inexhaustible resources at their fingertips, he argues, Zoomers and Millennials are accustomed to digital deep dives for fresh sounds. This shapes them into listeners who appreciate a wide range of music, including jazz, and who resist the idea of stylistic boundaries.
With this in mind, The Goodbye Look has presented acts that blend jazz rhythms, melodies, formats, and improvisation with elements of pop, rock, hip-hop, and electronic music. Past acts include Louis Cole, core member of electronic jazz-funk duo KNOWER, and Button Masher, a solo drummer who combines elements of jazz fusion with the electronic style called chiptune.
Beyond the booking
As they present this music, they market to young audiences where they are—on TikTok and Instagram—and highlight the magic of a live jazz experience with video content.
“When you try and play a recording to somebody who doesn't listen to jazz... most people, and not to their discredit, are not going to slow down and solely focus on internalizing all of that,” Graham said. “But if you brought somebody into a small room and had [pianist] Keith Jarrett play in front of them, they would be like, ‘I've never seen anything like this.’”
They have a particular orientation towards music by younger professional musicians that is generally pushing into new sonic realms. Carlos Snaider of EarthtoneSkytoneCarlos Snaider of EarthtoneSkytone
The organization also encourages younger audiences to come out by keeping their shows financially accessible. Most of The Goodbye Look’s shows are between $15-$25 to attend. And the pop-up nature of their shows - as well as the fact that they aren’t happening every week - gives The Goodbye Look underground allure.
Even in a typically rowdy bar setting, The Goodbye Look actively encourages deep, engaged listening. While they do present some louder shows that allow for chatting, Graham said he has no issue getting onstage before quieter shows and asking the audience to keep conversations at a minimum. This allows the audience to sink into the music and, maybe, open themselves up to something different.
For the Nov. 24 show, they’ll be at the Recreational Psychoacoustics Lab in North Seattle. Run by musician, producer and recording engineer Eric Padget, the space was previously Studio A of Avast! Recording Company. It’s a striking recording studio space and it supports The Goodbye Look’s mission.
“It's a fairly listening-focused environment,” Padget said. “The focus is on making sure that folks are comfortable and feel safe and also that the musicians feel like they have what they need in order to work at their best.”
An emerging ethos
Turns out, The Goodbye Look’s efforts to highlight a more inclusive conception of jazz and to encourage deep listening aligns with the values of many Gen-Z and Millennial jazz audiences, musicians, and purveyors in and outside of Seattle.
The Nov. 24 headliner is EarthtoneSkytone, a quartet co-led by Carlos Snaider (guitar/vocals/production) and Kelsey Mines (bassist/vocalist), and rounded out by synth magician Antoine Martel, and drummer Chris Icasiano.
While both Mines, 33, and Snaider, 29, have backgrounds and an interest in modern jazz, EarthtoneSkytone beats with the heart of a singer-songwriter, also blending in electronic production, driving grooves, ethereal vocals, and even elements of western classical music.
Their debut album, Pottery of Valleys and Arches, which dropped digitally Nov. 15, centers on themes of community and deep listening to the self and each other. After working on it for three years, it felt important to them to find a like-minded partner to help curate a memorable release show. The Goodbye Look seemed like a natural choice.
“They have a particular orientation towards music by younger professional musicians that is generally pushing into new sonic realms, often with electronics, and that can attract a standing-room audience,” Snaider said in an email to KNKX.
“I am certainly aligned with supporting music that is of our times, being open to any and all musical influences that have happened within our lifetimes (hip-hop, contemporary currents of improvised music, electronica, pop, etc.), as well as those that have brought the music forward for over a century.”
The Goodbye Look’s drive to create distinctive, listening-forward experiences resonated with the band, too. According to Mines, when they were planning this show, EarthtoneSkytone knew they wanted to create a “feeling of being surrounded by people who love the music” and that they were “making something that feels special in the Seattle scene.”
Following EarthtoneSkytone, The Goodbye Look will welcome the Micah Thomas Trio on Dec. 6 at The Rabbit Box. Graham, who made it clear that the Goodbye Look welcomes patrons over age 40 too, plans to continue this series into 2025 and hopes to eventually get their own venue. For now, The Goodbye Look continues to grow, and other efforts like theirs are surfacing.
Jazz is living
At Seattle cocktail bar Belltown Provisions, owner Jon Robinson and drummer D’Vonne Lewis, have begun a Wednesday night jazz series called “Electric Relaxation". Originally called “Jazz is Dead,” in homage to national record label and concert promoter Jazz is Dead, their event also aims to recruit younger jazz audiences.
“Our goal is to appeal to a younger demographic and the title ‘Jazz is Dead’ is a sarcastic reference to the fact that to most young people, jazz is dead. I encourage the guys to cover more modern hip-hop and rock artists in an aggressive modern jazz format,” Robinson said.
As for the national Jazz is Dead company, the story’s similar: Co-founder Andrew Lojero said Jazz is Dead is about giving young people permission to step into jazz and jazz adjacent genres.
“From inception, jazz and any groundbreaking derivative genres have always had an edge and were perceived as counterculture,” he told KNKX in an email. “Time has a way of smoothening out these edges and making it less interesting to new audiences.”
Undoubtedly, Lojero’s appraisal of jazz’s evolution would stir debate. But, it’s clear there’s a new generation in local and national jazz unafraid to shake things up.
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