BJU in the WSJ

BJU member Alan Ferber was featured in today's Wall Street Journal in Martin Johnson's article on the new Brooklyn jazz scene. An excerpt:

There is so much above-ground jazz activity in Brooklyn now -- the Park Slope scene has emerging parallels in Williamsburg, Fort Greene and Beford Stuyvesant -- that a new collective has dubbed itself the Brooklyn Jazz Underground. The organization comprises 10 bands, led by on-the-rise players, who have pooled their resources for promotion and used outlets like myspace.com to gain exposure for their music.

The Brooklyn Jazz Undergound had its launch last week at Smalls in Manhattan, but the spirit of the organization is firmly rooted in Brooklyn. All of the members reside there, and they wanted to give a nod to the vitality of the scene.

"Brooklyn represents an aesthetic that we all embrace in our own music -- that of fearless experimentation and open-mindedness," wrote Alan Ferber in an email. "Whenever I walk into a Brooklyn jazz club, I know that I have to check my preconceptions at the door and enter expecting to hear anything. It's very exciting and consistently inspiring.