Eclipse Jazz
In the 1950s to 1980s it could seem like the University of Michgan had a special program to develop young concert promoters. Student-originated promotion was behind the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz festivals, among many other cultural activities in the area. Nascent promoters could get a start in any of the numerous student-organized concert series. In the 1970s several student groups were organizing orchestral, small group ensemble and dance band concerts. Rock music also had a big role on campus.
In 1975, recognizing that the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festivals were floundering, a group formed specifically to promote jazz. Eclipse Jazz rapidly found its feet, promoting its first concert--McCoy Tyner--in November 1975. Within a year, Keith Jarrett had visited twice and Chick Corea had played with Gary Burton.
Eclipse dedicated itself to growing the audience for jazz. Eclipse's leadership didn't just want to find a paying audience, they wanted to cultivate educated enjoyment. Jazz, they argued, was not an art form that opened itself immediately to new listeners. As Eclipse explained in several documents, it hoped to use easier commercial or traditional acts to engage listeners.
To the National Endowment for the Arts leadership wrote:
[the original concert series is] "carefully arranged into a progression which pays particular attention to the education of those new to the music.... The result is a logical (though not chronological) sequence which begins with a popular, contemporary artist and progresses to the more esoteric forms. (NEA Report)
This plan was necessary because
"...little or no effort has been exerted in maintaining and developing a jazz audience in America. This is especially true of new "progressive" jazz. Eclipse serves an audience made up of people familiar with the music and reaches out to those only marginally exposed to jazz." (1978 newsletter)
Leadership took their sophistication seriously. They prioritized securing funds for a second concert series. The "Bright Moments" series served the deep afficiandos. Its small venue concerts presented "avant-garde" jazz and developing artists who might be known only to dedicated jazz listeners .
Additionally, In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Eclipse placed great stress on asking performers to give clinics in addition to their concert performances to interested afficiandos. This page shows George Adams leading an Eclipse-sponsored workshop.
Musicians bring your axes!
In January 1978, Eclipse added a regular jam session series. These drop-ins fostered practice and developing musicianship, whether a player followed a music curriculum for credit or played for social and casual reasons. Cultivating jazz musicianship added the potential to sustain the local music eco system by improving the quality of student musicians who moonlighted as semi-professional gig and session players. It could broaden the skills of casual musicians who played for private enjoyment or for small audiences in an era where it was still fairly common for party guests to bring over an instrument to enhance festivities.
Finally, briefly, Eclipse contributed to the tradition of free Ann Arbor summer concerts. Eclipse promoted jazz summer concerts in the mid-1980s. Unfortunately, the events struggled to reach viable audience numbers to justify city and university investment of time and money and Eclipse withdrew after a couple of seasons.
Eclipse was acutely aware of the racialization of jazz artists and audiences. Though they did not have today's vocabulary available to them, they pointed to longstanding low fees paid to even well-known jazz greats (Longer Shows Demand Higher Ticket Prices). They also firmly attached jazz to nascent world music, including groups such as Mandingo Griot, composed of African and American percussionists, in their programming. Few in the U.S. were familiar with African music in these decades. The promotion plays on exoticization even while bringing new, diverse sounds to Ann Arbor audiences
Early on Eclipse added one to two paid positions for recent-graduate coordinators. Several coordinators went on to careers in concert or event promotion. As fledgling professionals, the coordinators orchestrated series planning, pursued artists, completed contracts, and sought grant funding to support these ambitious activities.. Their early success was tied to their access to University resources, including student help.
The success of the coordinators' work depended on Eclipse's student members. Students contributed volunteer labor at concerts. They did paperwork. They postered incessently. They make sure physical tickets were available at local outlets such as participating record stores. They glued operations together and their reward was access to Eclipse's concerts and workshops. Unlike the coordinators, student volunteers were more likely to find a social or musical outlet through Eclipse than a pre-professional experience.
Promoting concerts with the University
Eclipse benefited from operating within University infrastructure. It had backup from the University Activities Center, and support from University when it pursued (and won) funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. It also had to bear the costs of access to University infrastructure. Eclipse learned the ropes of venue access and financing events on campus within a year of its foundation. It had already accessed the University's largest indoor concert venue, Hill Auditorium. At over 4,000 seats, Hill was demanding to fill and suitable for only some artists. Eclipse also had to learn that facility use was not run on a charitable basis by the Univeristy.
Eclipse, under UAC, settled a revenue split with the University Major Events Office (MEO) c. 1977 that set terms for use of different University venues. Eclipse staked itself financially on using big names to subsidize artists whose profile and audience they wished to cultivate. Big venues, however, also cost Eclipse more, with splits favoring MEO. Eclipse was able to recover only 10% of any net profit from its concert activities, reinforcing the importance of UAC and grant support Eclipse sought out.
Eclipse's financial arrangements with the University ultimately shaped the entire history of the organization. Eclipse bet big on its ability to generate ticket sale revenue. It needed to. Even with grant support, its own budgeting planned to find 80 to 90% of revenue through getting people to buy tickets. When ticket sales failed to meet expectations, Eclipse could retain nothing to sustain its programming. In a sense, their structure was straightforward exposure to the realities of event promotion; if promotions aren't successful, the business will not be sustainable. In the decade 1977-1987, Eclipse was forced to confront financial problems several times.