“I have this image in my mind of people walking in, and the music starts playing and people looking around at each other confused,” said Amy Kline, describing the bus shelter located near Chatham Square downtown.
As the Patron Services and Marketing Manager as Manchester Craftmen’s Guild Jazz, it was her idea to create “Pittsburgh’s Smallest Jazz Club” in the bus shelter – and Awesome Pittsburgh, which awards $1,000 grants for projects in the city, is helping that image move from her mind to reality.
“It’ll be all swing music, so there will be people dancing or at least tapping their foot and really thinking about why it’s there and what jazz is,” Kline said.
According to Kline, the installation will include jazz music from artists who either currently live in Pittsburgh or who were born and raised in the city.
“Either compositions about Pittsburgh or by Pittsburghers,” Kline said. “So there’s music from Maureen Budway’s new CD – she’s a local jazz vocalist – and so one of the pieces will be ‘Sweet Lover No More’ from her CD; we’ll also feature music from our Pittsburgh Jazz Legacy record as well as the Hill District Beat record that came out a couple years ago.”
Photos of Pittsburgh jazz artists playing live such as Stanley Turrentine and Ray Brown will line the wall, she added.
“The background of the bus shelter will look like you’re in a jazz club,” Kline described. “And there will be a place that you can kind of stand and take a picture of yourself – like a ‘selfie’ – with the ‘band.’”
Kline said jazz has often been referred to as “America’s classical music,” but there are artists playing new jazz music all the time.
“I just thought it was a really fun way to get people interested in the music,” Kline said. “It’s also a fun way to entertain people at a bus shelter.”
The “jazz club” will be installed around Jan. 20 and will remain through the end of February.
