[Dixielandjazz] The Jazz Foundation of America

[Stephen Barbone]

Next time I think about jazz musos who are forced to have day gigs to
survive, I'll also think about jazz musos who don't and Ms Wendy
Oxenhorn.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

December 26, 2002 - New York Times

Making Sure Jazz Musicians Don't Get the Blues

By LYNDA RICHARDSON

WENDY OXENHORN, the executive director of the Jazz Foundation of
America, tells good stories about the musicians she helps, like the horn
players who use Super Glue on their teeth because they can't afford
dental implants, or an original bebopper, still performing, who
subsisted on two cans of Slim-Fast a day — until she got to him —
because he was too blind to shop or cook.

But what about her own life? Now, there's a story.

One recent afternoon, Ms. Oxenhorn stood at the end of a subway platform
on West 103rd Street, facing the wall, wailing away on her blues
harmonica as if the spirit of an old man from Mississippi had jumped
into her skin.

She was a peculiar sight to behold even by the infamous standards of the
New York underground, this ethereal former ballerina with Botticelli
features, oversized hazel eyes and highlighted blond tresses going to
town on her harmonica. Three trains rumbled by. Subway riders eyed her
curiously. She didn't mind. She practices there because she likes the
acoustics.

"With the job I have, I never get time to play," she said, finally
hopping onto a local and taking a seat. "If you stop playing, you lose
your chops."

Ms. Oxenhorn runs a shoestring operation that tries to improve the lives
of ailing and struggling jazz musicians, most of them over 50. She
spends her days arguing with landlords ready to evict them, finding them
free medical care, paying for food, getting horns out of hock.

Earlier that day, she was in her cramped Midtown office. The telephone
rang incessantly. Ms. Oxenhorn, who is reed thin, looked harried. This
holiday season is not a jolly one for jazz musicians, she said. She
attributes the sparsity of gigs to a sagging economy.

"It really has put musicians in a terrible way," she said. "December was
the month where there was never a jazz musician who wasn't employed on
New Year's Eve. But this year, I know of only two who are employed, and
one is working a wedding at a catering hall."

The foundation, which was established in 1989, helps performers who are
often too proud to ask for help. She usually finds out about them
through someone else. When Ms. Oxenhorn took the job two years ago, the
group helped 35 musicians a year. Now, she says, it assists 35 musicians
a month. The bulk of the financing comes from a September benefit
concert at the Apollo Theater. The most recent concert raised $190,000.

The other day, Ms. Oxenhorn was talking on the telephone to a
65-year-old Brazilian singer who used to be a big star in England but
now has only $3 to her name. There's lots of "honey" and "o-o-oh baby"
in the conversation.

"We're going to do most of the phone bill today," Ms. Oxenhorn told the
singer. "If you do play in the subway, promise me if it's really cold
you won't stay."

She hung up and turned her attention warily to a visitor. She is eager
to plug the foundation, but not so comfortable talking about herself.
She won't reveal her age. In a youth-oriented business, she says, doing
so would hurt her ability to get gigs. She performed with the Ladell
McLin Band at the Lenox Lounge in Harlem on Dec. 19.

Ms. Oxenhorn says she picked up the harmonica more than three years ago
when she was heartbroken over the end of an affair with an Italian
composer. "It completely healed my heart," she said. "It took over my
life."

She got her first chance to play with a band from an elderly guitarist
from Mississippi named Ted Williams, during rush hour in the subway. She
has a photo of the two of them when they hit it big, performing at the
B. B. King Blues Club and Grill in Times Square.

 
AS you have probably deduced, Ms. Oxenhorn knows how to have drama in
her life. She took a reporter to her large, rent-stabilized apartment on
the Upper West Side, where she has boarded strangers, typically European
backpackers, in three bedrooms to pay the rent. A single mother, she has
slept in the living room at times with her two daughters, ages 10 and
17.

Ms. Oxenhorn, who is divorced, perched on a mustard-colored couch. As
she talked, a pet cockatiel fluttered onto her head. A little poodle
warmed her lap.

She says she has always embraced causes. In 1989, she was a co-creator
of Street News, a monthly tabloid hawked by homeless vendors, but she
quit in 1990 because of personality differences with the other
co-founder. She later started a nonprofit program for children with
parents addicted to alcohol or drugs. At one point, she worked with
children in welfare hotels.

She grew up in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., where her father was an optometrist
and her mother a schoolteacher, and moved alone to New York City when
she was 14 to become a ballerina. Three years later, she was forced to
give up dance after a bad knee injury. She says she got so depressed
that she called a suicide hot line, but wound up consoling the
counselor, whose husband had left her. She counseled at the hot line for
three years.

Ms. Oxenhorn's heritage is Romanian, Russian and Turkish, yet musicians
quite often are convinced that she has black roots. "They think I play
like an old blues man," she said, laughing. "They say, `You might be
white on the outside, but you're a sister.' "

As a musician, she says she relates intuitively to them, so much so that
her job doesn't even feel like work. "I've made this exquisite bubble,
this corner of the world where everyone is happy."