A MUSIC PRESENTING NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION COMMITTED TO CULTIVATING AND REVITALIZING JAZZ and NEW MUSIC CULTURE IN LOS ANGELES
- We focus on “west coast creative jazz & new music—past, present, and future”. bridging the gap between prominent national acts and local West Coast innovators, regularly creating opportunities for collaboration across regions.
- We cultivate venues partnerships: We are a nomadic concert series, hosting adventurous performances in diverse venues across Los Angeles to make our programming accessible to the entire community. Over the years we have formed partnerships with venues such as REDCAT, The Ford, the World Stage, 2220 Arts, the Nimoy Theatre, LACMA, the Bluewhale, the Sierra Madre Playhouse, the Pasadena Conservatory of Music and many more.
- We follow an evolutionary focus, balancing trailblazers and emerging artist to sustain the evolution of the genre.
OUR PROGRAMS
- Angel City Jazz Fest / Jazz Refractions
As of 2026, the festival has been renamed Jazz Refractions. Jazz is the source light, and Angel City is the prism. The music featured at Jazz Refractions is rooted in the jazz tradition of radical improvisation, freedom, and technical mastery. However, once it passes through Angel City’s lens, it bends, distorts, and shatters into entirely new forms unrestricted by musical genres. - Angel City Jazz Young Artist Competition
an avenue for young Jazz musicians in the greater Los Angeles area to create and collaborate with one another in an effort to expand upon the traditional concepts of Jazz composition/arrangement, improvisation and ensemble performance.
Los Angeles has long acted as a touchstone for change in improvisational music. Where crowded New York forced musicians together to shape the shared code of bebop in the 1940s, spacious Los Angeles encouraged individual thought, the kind that arrives like a light through a window or a quiet voice in a desert.
Since 2008, Angel City Jazz has striven to continue the message of L.A. prophets such as Ornette Coleman, Billy Higgins, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, Horace Tapscott, John Carter and Bobby Bradford. All have made individualistic music; most have formed communities to foster innovative thought.
Our programs have been supported in part by grants from:
