Jazzed Up

The ‘We Always Swing’ Jazz Series is back for its 30th anniversary. 

Should you ever have occasion to ask Jon Poses about jazz, be aware you’re about to open some floodgates. Poses, the founder, executive director, and artistic director of the ”We Always Swing” Jazz Series, possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of and unbridled enthusiasm for the genre.  

He’ll get into the nuances of everything from big band to bebop, and you’ll find yourself deeply invested — even if you were initially intimidated by that inherent jazz-guy geekiness.  

That’s because Poses is a raconteur with a gift for weaving context and side stories into a compelling and cohesive narrative. He loves this stuff, and he hopes he can help more people cultivate an appreciation for it. And interestingly enough, it’s Poses’ positioning as a storyteller that led to the creation of the Jazz Series, which celebrates its thirtieth season this year.  

Poses came to Columbia from New York City in 1978 to pursue a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Finding the cadence of the daily news cycle limiting the kind of writing he enjoyed, he started pitching long-form features about music and other subjects to magazines.  

Later, when Bill Sheals and Gary Moore, who in 1985 had just purchased Murry’s, asked if any of the musicians he’d interviewed might be interested in playing at the restaurant, Poses had the perfect pick: New York-based, nationally known pianist James Williams.  

Apparently, the show went really well.  

“Almost immediately after James returned to New York, my phone started ringing. Musicians — well-known musicians who I had seen perform — said, ‘James Williams gave me your number and said you have this place, and you do jazz,’” Poses said, correcting the artists that it wasn’t his place.  

Word got around that Murry’s was the place to play. As a result, for the next decade Poses, at Sheals’ and Moore’s behest, booked a mix of local, regional and, about once a month, national talent to perform on Saturday nights. To make the economics of bringing national talent to Columbia feasible, Poses began organizing multi-city tours for such artists so that Murry’s could be one of several stops. Poses had become a de facto music agent.  

“I never intended to hang a shingle and say, ‘I have an agency and I represent so and so and so and so,” Poses explained. “But I would be on the phone six or seven hours a day booking twenty-city tours.”  

But by 1994, there was a shift in the Saturday-night vibe. Murry’s was becoming more popular — especially with college football fans — and the jazz crowd’s practice of arriving two to three hours early to snag tables close to the musicians was eating into the restaurant’s turnover. And then there was the somewhat awkward practice of approaching each table to ask the patrons if they were staying for the music and, if so, to collect a cover charge.  

“Gary, Billy, and I had a sit down and I said, ‘The last thing I want to do is have Murry’s go out of business because of jazz.’ We agreed the Saturday night formula had run its course. It was no longer be viable.” Sharing that reflection, Poses said he considered returning to New York City.  

“I felt I had done all I had to do jazz-wise in Columbia,” he said. “But somewhere in my brain, I wondered if people would buy tickets to a series of concerts.”  

Poses prodded to the people on his mailing list — which had swelled to 300 names and addresses by that point — and asked if there would be any interest in purchasing season tickets to jazz shows.  

“Everybody said it was a great idea,” Poses recalled. “Yes. Yes. Yes!”  

He got to work and booked a six-concert series running from fall 1994 to spring 1995, announcing the concerts in July. Alas, the reaction Poses got when he pitched his idea didn’t translate to ticket sales. That first season, thirteen people bought tickets to all six concerts — a grand total of seventy-eight tickets.  

“It’s always been a slow build,” Poses said, noting that the distinctly American sound has rarely received the fanfare given to other styles. “Jazz is not taught in the schools. Now, it’s not heard on the radio as much. It’s not seen on TV. There’s only one genre that does not have a national award show.”  

And that’s a big part of what fuels Poses’ ambition to expose more people to jazz. As he insists, jazz can be framed as a sociopolitical discussion. Early jazz bands were some of the first to bring together Black and white musicians. And the very nature of jazz invites — or even demands — that the individual add some element of themself to the music.    

“Jazz owns a fluid and dynamic movement,” Poses added. “It’s not static. One of the main tenets is improvisation. What I tell people is in classical music, you‘re judged by how closely you’ve come to playing the music the way Mozart intended it to be played. Jazz is not the opposite, but it’s different. Okay, Duke Ellington presented ‘Take the A Train.’ His orchestra played it so well, who wants to hear other versions of ‘Take the A Train’ unless you’re going to add something to the mix? Unless you’re going to interpret it and make it your own? Jazz is about having your own voice and creating.”  

But even a slow build takes form over time. After a few years of financial flops — with Poses at one point bankrolling a significant chunk of the operations largely using his tour commissions — the series, having attained nonprofit status in 1999, became eligible for grants, gifts from foundations, and sponsorships as well as allowing donors to take a tax-deduction for contributions. Today, Poses said, the organization’s annual budget — having grown from the initial $30,000 to $375,000 in fiscal year ‘25 — is divided almost evenly among grants, foundations, and sponsorships; individual gifts; and ticket sales.  

The increased budget has resulted in the Jazz Series exponentially increasing its offerings. In addition to subscription concerts, which now number between ten and thirteen annually, the organization, in partnerships with Columbia Public School District and MU School of Music, produces several in-school educational and community outreach programs throughout the year; and the Von Freeman Memorial Lending Library, housed at the Jazz Series’ offices at 21 N. Tenth St. holds more than 9,000 CD and LP recordings.  

Those with library memberships can check out albums on a weekly basis, while everyone is invited to stop by and listen to selections on site.  

But, of course, there’s nothing like live music, and for its thirtieth anniversary, We Always Swing is presenting a homecoming of sorts.  

“It was a high bar we set, and we came pretty darn close to scoring everything we wanted to,” Poses said. “This year, we wanted to do a retrospective and have a number of musicians who have been here — some who were here recently and some who haven’t been here in twenty years or more.”  

It’s a mix of jazz veterans like Grammy-nominated vocalist René Marie, drummer Matt Wilson’s Good Trouble, and saxophonist Vincent Herring’s Something Else! group, as well as up-and-comers like trombonist Nick Finzer and pianist Emmet Cohen.  

One beloved Jazz Series tradition is the Dr. Carlos and Laura Perez-Mesa Memorial Concert, which honors the memories of two local arts patrons. Since 2000, as a nod to Carlos Perez-Mesa’s Cuban heritage, the annual concert shines a light on native Cuban jazz musicians. This season, on March 20, 2025, the all-Cuban Hilario Durán Quartet takes the stage at the Missouri Theatre.  

All told, it looks like this season will be a nice chapter in the story of the “We Always Swing” Concert Series.  

And local concertgoers might spot a few familiar faces when the renowned saxophonist Bobby Watson takes on the role of conducting the eighteen-piece Columbia Jazz Orchestra, which will perform an all-Watson-composed repertoire.