1. Mask off
Kansas City never entirely embraced pandemic precautions. Much of the populace treated official mandates as gratuitous suggestions. Even so, Kansas City’s live music landscape shifted during the difficulties. The good news is that new jazz-friendly venues replaced many of the rooms that didn’t survive.
2. Saying the quiet part out loud
Some readers of Plastic Sax are annoyed by this site’s penchant for disclosing disheartening attendance figures. Pat Metheny acknowledged the town’s limited appetite for jazz in an interview with In Kansas City magazine.
3. Fiver
Many observers insist that the customary absence of cover charges at performances of jazz devalues the music. Green Lady Lounge, Kansas City’s most popular jazz venue, instituted a five dollar admission fee this year.
4. Underground surge
Thanks largely to the initiatives of the enterprising young musicians Seth Davis and Evan Verploegh, avant-garde jazz and experimental music was much easier to find in 2021.
5. 3333
After relocating to 3333 Wyoming Street, the Charlotte Street Foundation became a welcoming home for left-of-center improvised music.
6. The beat goes on
The storied drummer Carl Allen replaced Bobby Watson as Endowed Chair of Jazz Studies at UMKC. Much of the jazz scene’s fate rests on Allen’s ability to attract and develop promising talent.
7. Dunn good
Gerald Dunn, the person who has become the institutional memory of the American Jazz Museum and has long served as an essential component of Kansas City’s music scene, was named a Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists Association.
8. Missouri uncompromised
Carolyn Glenn Brewer’s new study Under Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1965-1972 provides essential insights into a previously under-documented era.
9. Next level
Hermon Mehari’s progression as a refined practitioner of European jazz and the ascension of Lucy Wijnands’ career were among the most notable artistic developments by artists associated with Kansas City.
10. Rest in peace
The passing of organ kingpin Everette DeVan was the most prominent of several heartbreaking deaths.