New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble
The band also serves as a training ground for younger musicians. “We have musicians in the band who are in their early twenties and in their seventies, but the experience is invaluable for younger players.
The apprenticeship part of jazz has almost been destroyed, so we are trying to bring that back. One of the only places you can learn certain things is on the bandstand in front of a live audience playing with musicians who learned from the early masters of the art form. Now we get to pass along our knowledge.”
The New York State of the Art Jazz Ensemble plays every four or five weeks at the NYC Baha’i Center in Greenwich Village in the new John Birks Gillespie Auditorium which Longo was able to name after Dizzy. Longo books jazz acts there every Tuesday night with low ticket prices to allow jazz lovers to hear great new music at prices below New York’s jazz clubs and concert halls.
