Community Corner
The Jazz Loft Archiving Project Awarded $40K Foundation Grant
Funding will support renovation of Jazz Loft basement to serve as space for recording and preservation of archival material.
Press release from The Jazz Loft:
July 9, 2020
The Jazz Loft, a music venue and museum located in Stony Brook, today announced that The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, Inc. has awarded the Loft a $40,000 grant to support an archiving project to inventory and digitalize the more than 10,000 historical Jazz artifacts in the possession of the museum. This is the Jazz Loft’s largest grant to date.
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The Jazz Loft is a non-profit whose mission is dedicated to the preservation, education and performance of the American-born art form of Jazz.
The Gardiner grant will be matched by a $40,000 gift from Jazz Loft patron Dan Oliveri, enabling the Loft to renovate the building’s basement, which dates to the 1770’s. The building, once called "The Stone Jug", will see its basement section updated and transformed into a multi-use space for the archiving project."
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“I am incredibly excited and deeply honored by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation grant,” said Jazz Loft Founder Tom Manuel. “The Gardiner Foundation really is the standard of serious historical preservation projects. This project at the Jazz Loft will allow us to properly archive and store the important Jazz collection we have and to preserve a part of our building that is 250 years old.”
"The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation's mission is the advancement of regional history. It is also our purpose to encourage the sustainability of our historic stewards. The inventive adaptive reuse of this building as an entertainment and educational space for the community is a model for other organizations. The story Jazz in American history can be viewed as a study in social evolution. This new research space will offer scholars and the public access to a vast archival collection," said Kathryn M. Curran, Executive Director of the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation.
According to Manuel, the museum currently possesses paper records, sheet music, personal possessions of Jazz legends past and present, posters, photos, diaries, manuscripts, programs, musical instruments, vinyl record collections and more that require cataloging and storage.
This project will provide safe access to the basement, a section of the historical building which, up until now, has been inaccessible to the public. Construction is expected to begin August 1, with a completion date set for end of 2020.
The Jazz Loft is located at 275 Christian Avenue in Stony Brook. Visit https://www.thejazzloft.org.
This press release was produced by The Jazz Loft. The views expressed here are the author's own.
