Community Calendar

Got a big dream of playing the Tiny Desk? Send us a video of you playing one song behind a desk of your choosing. If you win, you'll get to play your very own Tiny Desk concert and go on tour with NPR Music. When you enter the 2026 Tiny Desk Contest, you join a nationwide community of music-makers and creators. Get started on your video now! GET ALL THE DETAILS HERE.

Here's what you do:
Create a new video that shows you playing one song you've written.
Do it the way you'd perform a Tiny Desk concert: at a desk. (Any desk!)
Upload your video to YouTube.
Fill out the entry form after it opens at 10 a.m. ET on January 13 and before 11:59 p.m. ET on February 9, 2026.

The winner will:
Play a Tiny Desk concert at NPR in Washington, D.C.
Be featured on NPR’s All Things Considered
Headline NPR Music's Tiny Desk Contest On The Road tour

Supported by KNKX. Experience counts, especially in jazz. The more time musicians spend interpreting tunes and interacting with others, the more articulation an audience can expect. You can hear the fruits of such work in the expressive language The Cookers bring to the bandstand and to their five critically acclaimed recordings, Warriors, Cast the First Stone, Believe, Time and Time Again (which was the iTunes Jazz CD of the year in 2014) and The Call of the Wild and Peaceful Heart. This exciting all-star septet summons up an aggressive mid ‘60s spirit with a potent collection of expansive post-bop originals marked by all the requisite killer instincts and pyrotechnic playing expected of some of the heaviest hitters on the scene today.

Cecil McBee, George Cables, Eddie Henderson, and Billy Hart all came up in the heady era of the mid ‘60s. It was a period that found the dimensions of hard bop morphing from their original designs, and each of these guys helped facilitate the process as members of some of the most important bands of the era. Hart and Henderson were members of Herbie Hancock’s groundbreaking Mwandishi group; Cecil McBee anchored Charles Lloyd’s great ’60s quartet alongside Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette; George Cables held down the piano chair in numerous bands including groups led by Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Dexter Gordon and Art Pepper.

David Weiss and Donald Harrison, from a more recent generation and the youngest members of the band, are experts in this forthright lingo, having gained experience performing with Art Blakey, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, Charles Tolliver, Roy Haynes and Herbie Hancock.

After ten years together, The Cookers, who “embody the serious-as-death commitment that it took to thrive on the New York scene some four decades ago” (Andrew Gilbert, The Boston Globe), recently released their fifth album, The Call of the Wild and Peaceful Heart, the follow up album to their four critically-acclaimed recordings, Warriors, Cast The First Stone, Believe and Time and Time Again. On The Call of the Wild and Peaceful Heart again the incredibly high level of musicianship has only increased with the latest offering of fresh, challenging, boundary-pushing music from these legendary, revered, veteran improvisers.

Sponsored by KNKX. Join ArtsWA for a landmark celebration honoring 60 years of the Governor’s Arts & Heritage Awards, Washington State’s highest honor in art, culture, and heritage.

Since 1966, the Governor’s Arts Awards have recognized outstanding artists and organizations who have made significant contributions to the cultural vitality of Washington. In 1989, the program expanded to include the Governor’s Heritage Awards, honoring individuals and groups preserving and passing down cultural traditions.

Unlike past years, this anniversary event includes no new nominations, offering space to celebrate the enduring impact of all those who have shaped Washington’s creative legacy. This special anniversary event will bring together past and present honorees from across the state for an unforgettable evening of live performances, recognition, and community. Celebrate the power of the arts, creativity, and heritage in shaping Washington’s identity. All are welcome. Come be part of this joyful tribute to our state’s creative legacy.

Sponsored by KNKX. Olympic College and the Music Discovery Center will once again bring scholastic jazz to downtown Bremerton.

On February 5 and 6, 2026, the Music Discovery Center of Bremerton and Olympic College are proud to present the 2nd Annual Quincy Square Jazz Festival. With his discovery of music in Bremerton, Quincy Jones went on to be one of the most celebrated performers, producers, and promoters of Jazz and modern music in American history. From Bebop to Pop to Hip hop, Quincy has been on the forefront of musical innovation his entire career and the city of Bremerton is proud to honor him with Quincy Square, a brand new music promenade in downtown Bremerton on 4th Street.

This year, the Quincy Square Jazz Festival is expanding to welcome instrumental and vocal jazz ensembles from across the state to join us in a day of competition, education, and celebration. We’ll kick off on Thursday, February 5th with middle school jazz bands competing at Olympic College. On Friday, February 6th, we’ll switch to high school jazz bands at Olympic College and high school vocal jazz ensembles at Bremerton High School. The top three jazz bands and the top three vocal jazz ensembles will be invited to perform at the Quincy Square Jazz Gala on Friday evening, February 6th at the historic Roxy Theatre.

Our panel of skilled adjudicators will score and place ensembles and follow up with a clinic to mentor musicians. Each group will have professional sound and video recording provided at the conclusion of the festival.

Registration is open now and limited to 20 ensembles in each of the three categories. Spots are likely to fill fast!

Presented by the Music Discovery Center & the Olympic College Foundation
Co-sponsored by The ROXY Theatre, Sound West Group, Ted Brown Music

Noir City showcases the best in film noir. Produced by Eddie Muller—Film Noir Foundation founder, Turner Classic Movies host, and "Czar of Noir''— this celebration of the film noir genre is a beloved annual event. This year's theme is Face the Music--15 tales of music, mayhem, and murder!

The opening night film is Black Angel from 1946.

In the waning days of 2024, Julian Lage began what he calls a writing sprint. Lage has long been prolific: In the three decades since the documentary Jules at Eight identified him as a prodigy, Lage has made a dozen records with his own bands and duos, and three times that many with leading lights of his artistic orbit, like John Zorn, Gary Burton, and Charles Lloyd. But Lage was preparing for a four-day residency at SFJAZZ, plus the premiere of a new quartet of old collaborators and friends who had strangely never recorded together: Lage with steadfast bassist Jorge Roeder, dynamic drummer Kenny Wollesen, and vaunted keyboardist John Medeski. As he thought about their qualities as players and hypothesized about how they might interact, he set a timer for 20 minutes, wrote a tune, recorded it once, and then began again.

Lage called one particular tune he loved during that sprint, “Storyville.” It’s quick, flickering riff felt like an invitation for conversation, exactly the kind of thing he hopes to find in such a sprint. “My dream with composing, really, is to have something to talk about once we’re together,” he says. “It’s not the end-all, be-all.” Hearing what the quartet created with the piece in the studio is like watching a pot of water boil and observing not the chaos but the order, the way every molecule is pushing against the other with purpose.

That is the spirit of Scenes from Above, Lage’s second full-length album with the producer Joe Henry and his first with this striking quartet. Where 2024’s Speak to Me was Lage’s grand statement as an improvising bandleader capable of helming a relatively large ensemble through a diverse set of tunes, Scenes from Above is about being a band member himself, about Lage exploring the tunes he has written with a crew he has built with that entirely in mind. Its nine tracks frame a brilliantly open experience, with four astounding players giving and taking space in equal measure as they explore these songs in one space, in real time.