Platform Papers No. 17 now available in the library

		The Permanent Underground: Australian Contemporary Jazz in the New Millennium by Peter Rechniewski Read the first three pages (PDF). Subscribe now! Click here to download a subscription form. Paperback. $13.95 rrp. Publication January 2008 ISBN 978-0-9802802-6-5, Series ISSN 1449-583-X
		Contemporary Australian jazz, by any measure, is flourishing, writes Peter Rechniewski. More talent, more recording, more audience development, widespread respect for our musicians overseas. So why is the jazz scene sick and like to die? Why do musicians eke out the barest living? Why do old venues close and no new ones replace them? Why is jazz held in such low esteem by the media? For all its apparent vitality, jazz remains in crisis. Peter Rechniewski is well-placed to diagnose the problems and recommend a cure. In this hard-hitting account he traces the origins of the current crisis and proposes a new National Jazz Plan to raise the profile, increase the audiences, lift income levels and enhance the career pathways of a growing number of musicians. Jazz, he writes, demands an urgent revision of both the public and governmental attitudes if we are to 'liberate jazz from its imprisonment in a permanent underground'. Peter Rechniewski has been involved in jazz for thirty years. He was one of the founders of the Sydney Improvised Music Association (SIMA) and is its current president and artistic director. He has written widely on jazz, been a jazz broadcaster and is a consultant to the present Australian arts festivals. This issue also includes responses to Cathy Hunt and Phyllida Shaw. Platform Papers invites considered responses to Peter Rechniewski for publication in the July 2008 edition.