Remembering Terry Jean Pollard

Posted by & filed under In Memoriam.

Terry Jean Pollard was known in the Detroit jazz community as “the queen of the vibes” for her mastery of the instrument. A Detroit bred pianist/vibraphonist, Pollard was a powerhouse performer who started out playing at jazz clubs around the city including a famous stint with the Billy Mitchell band at the Blue Bird Inn […]

KIP:D Planning Grant Awarded by The Kresge Foundation

Posted by & filed under Press, PROJECTS, RESOURCES, workinonit.

Very grateful to The Kresge Foundation for believing in our sonic vision for The Blue Bird neighborhood and community. The planning begins now thanks to their support. Detroit Sound Conservancy will conduct community engagement and initial design for the redevelopment of the Blue Bird Inn, an iconic jazz club on Detroit’s west side, into a […]

Organization of American Historians 2018

Posted by & filed under Education.

Stop, Look, and Listen: Sound and Film Conservancy and African American History [The following is a description of a panel to be held April 13th, 2018 in Sacramento at the Organization of American Historians Conference. Read more about the conference here.] This roundtable discussion imaginatively engages with the conference theme of “The Forms of History” […]

A Sonic Desert?

Posted by & filed under Conference, ENDANGERED, Preservation, workinonit.

Has Detroit become a sonic desert? Musical expression has been a long-standing pivot point for debates about Detroit’s successes and failures. Though the Detroit area has a wide range of cultural expressions for which it is associated—including art, design, architecture, literature, and, critically, industrial production—music has been the dominant site for articulating exactly how Detroit […]

Our 2018 Begins Now….

Posted by & filed under OUTREACH.

Our 2018 begins now. It’s been an incredible year. The Blue Bird Stage went to France, we turned five, John Lee Hooker got inducted into the Detroit Sound Hall of Fame, we have come up with a plan to restore the Club Heaven Sound System as a mobile legacy performance program, and we did acoustic […]

Memphis Meets Detroit

Posted by & filed under Education, Events.

In celebration of the final night of Sound Diplomacy‘s Music Cities Convention as well as the deep sonic connections between Memphis and Detroit, Detroit Sound Conservancy presents an evening with Saturna, Carleton Gholz, and LeRoy. RSVP + MORE INFO HERE. Saturna, Memphis Saturna is a Memphian, a singer, and a deejay of two decades who […]

Red’s Jazz: Surveying

Posted by & filed under Preservation, PROJECTS.

This summer, I consulted for Oakland Avenue Urban Farm which had just purchased the abandoned Red’s Jazz Shoeshine Parlor located at 9148 Oakland Avenue. The business itself still exists further south at 8348 Oakland. Our friend Jean-Louis Farges and his team, working on behalf of the farm, had discovered a stage in the back of […]

The National Theatre: A Facade of Silence

Posted by & filed under Education, ENDANGERED, Preservation.

On Monday September 11th, the property management company Bedrock Detroit publicly announced their plans to demolish the National Theatre and move a portion of its façade to serve as a pedestrian walkway. We are deeply concerned. On August 24, the first public kickoff meeting for Bedrock’s proposed Book Tower and Monroe Block development projects was […]