A local church’s part-time jazz club helped performers through covid

by Beth Beisel

Covid-19 hit DC jazz artists hard as venues, restaurants, and bars closed, leaving them without performance spaces and income.

“It was such an uncertain time for everyone,” Jazz@Wesley producer Tiya Adé recalls. “We couldn’t do our monthly live shows, but we knew musicians needed help.”

In 2010, Adé co-founded the program that transforms the National United Methodist Church (NUMC) at 5312 Connecticut Avenue into a jazz venue on the fourth Saturday of each month.

Early in the pandemic, Melissa Chavez, then the musical director at NUMC, advocated for maintaining the monthly jazz series. Chavez and Adé devised a plan to pay musicians their regular fee to record performances in a studio, and later stream the shows online for free.

Rev. Doug Robinson-Johnson, lead pastor of NUMC, supported these efforts but was concerned about the loss of Jazz@Wesley’s face-to-face community, and as the pandemic wore on, the cost.

“I sometimes wondered if we were investing in the right areas, like maybe the arts are a luxury,” Robinson-Johnson said. “But each time I started to think that way, I remembered how most of the content of our faith is handed on through the arts, especially music.”

So, Jazz@Wesley quietly aided struggling musicians. Local groups recorded sessions each month at Blue House Productions, a recording studio in Kensington, Maryland. Jazz@Wesley then streamed the free performances on the fourth Saturday of each month, in keeping with its regular live-show schedule. Musicians were paid a full live performance rate.

Jazz@Wesley resumed live performances in April 2022, initially to a sparse audience. Gradually, the audience returned. Then, when inflation struck, Jazz@Wesley increased musician salaries for 2023. It is planning on raising pay rates again for 2024.

And now, Jazz@Wesley is reaching out to its community for a boost. On Saturday, December 16th, Jazz@Wesley is combining its annual Christmas show with a fundraiser.

The event is crucial to sustaining the nonprofit’s mission: to fairly compensate musicians for their contributions to the arts while also keeping ticket prices low. It typically costs just $10 to see some of DC’s best jazz performers.

And on December 16th, a dozen of DC’s best jazz musicians and vocalists will be performing at the direction of renowned DC bandleader Bobby Felder.

“We always do a big show at Christmas time, and our audience just loves hearing their favorite holiday tunes in a jazzy, upbeat style,” Adé said.

The event will begin with an optional sit-down holiday dinner from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m., followed by the concert from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The “Dinner & Concert” option is $35, and the “Concert” option is $20. Advance ticket purchase is required for the “Dinner & Concert.” Concert-only tickets can be bought online via Eventbrite or at the door.

“We do hope people will come out to support us,” says Adé. “We know everyone will have a great time.”

Jazz@Wesley is located at 5312 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, a few blocks north of Politics and Prose. The nonprofit also accepts donations at nationalchurch.org/support-jazz.