Partnership preserves jazz

The GAM Foundation and the Excellence in the Community Series — two local jazz-music promotional organizations — will announce a working partnership on Monday during the Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts concert at the Sheraton City Centre.

The announcement will be made by Gordon Hanks, founder of the GAM Foundation (and owner of Holladay Pharmacy), and Jeff Whitley, founder of Excellence in the Community (and also founder of jazz ensemble Lark & Spur).

"We are thrilled to have the Excellence in the Community as part of our organization," said Hanks. "What Jeff is doing is promoting terrific local musicians and taking the music to Utah schools, thus promoting and preserving jazz music."

Whitley added, "The GAM Foundation will continue its Jazz SLC/Jazz at the Sheraton Concert series, bringing the biggest names in jazz to Salt Lake City, and Excellence in the Community will continue its focus on presenting and promoting the top local musicians. Together we will seek to expand, refine, improve both concepts and work on new projects that will lead towards our overall goal of establishing Utah as a center for world-class musicianship of many genres."

The GAM Foundation, headed by Hanks, Mike MacKaye and Hanks' daughter, Amanda Lufkin, has brought such names as Herbie Hancock, Dee Dee Bridgewater, John Scofield, Dave Brubeck, George Shearing and Ray Brown, among others, to Salt Lake City over the past 12 years. The series is known today as JazzSLC.

"I just wanted to hear good music," Hanks said. "And it's become far bigger than I had thought it would."

Whitely's Excellence in the Community was started at the end of 2005 with the goal of showcasing local musicians and their talent. "The world-class jazz and acoustic musicians are here in great numbers and in a wide variety of numbers, missing opportunities and waiting to be discovered. EIC was formed to address this problem."

One of the first major EIC concerts featured the Floor family — Jerry, Greg and Emilee Floor — each of whom is a jazz musician in his or her own right.

"Gordon has produced 140 concerts and donated more than $1 million to music education in Utah," said Whitely. "He is so conscious of the community. And that's what the Excellence in the Community series is all about. The Jazz at the Sheraton Series takes a break over the summer. The Excellence Concerts will continue, one a month, through the summer months and throughout the year."

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E-mail: scott@desnews.com