Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra
| Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra | |
|---|---|
| Jazz orchestra | |
| Short name | SJMO |
| Founded | 1990 |
| Location | Washington, DC |
| Concert hall | National Museum of American History Auditorium |
| Music director | Charlie Young |
The Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra (SJMO) is the national jazz orchestra of the United States. It is based at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC where it is the orchestra-in-residence. The SJMO was founded in 1990 with the dual mission of performing and preserving American jazz masterworks and raising public awareness and understanding of the genre.
The orchestra was established in 1990 by an Act of Congress with an appropriation to the Smithsonian Institution of $242,000. It was founded by Gunther Schuller and David Baker and began performing in 1991. The inaugural season, jointly conducted by Schuller and Baker, consisted of six weekends of free concerts for which the conductors collected or commissioned transcriptions of the original arrangements of the works to be presented and provided the orchestra's members with tapes of the original performances.
Since that time, the SJMO has performed in nine foreign countries and 26 US states in addition to numerous free concerts in Washington, DC. Among their performances outside their base at the National Museum of American History have been a performance at the White House in 1993 celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival; the Cultural Olympiad at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia; and a 1999 tour of the United States presenting concerts in tribute to the 100th anniversary of Duke Ellington's birth which included a performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival in a concert featuring Ellington's Suite Thursday, originally commissioned for the festival.
In 2012, at the age of 80, David Baker stepped down as the SJMO's Artistic Director. The occasion was marked by a special concert consisting entirely of Baker's compositions. Charlie Young, a jazz saxophonist and educator at Howard University, took up the post of Artistic Director after Baker's retirement.
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