After 33 years, Seattle jazz nonprofit Earshot Jazz is on the precipice of a new era.
Since 1991, lauded curator John Gilbreath has served as the organization’s executive director. Under his prudent watch, Earshot Jazz, including its festival and magazine, has become a cultural fixture in Seattle and helped support the careers of countless local jazz artists. In October, the organization announced that Gilbreath would be retiring in early 2025.
“I'm looking forward to a break, but I know myself and I'm not very good at sitting still, so I'm sure I'll be involved in some things,” Gilbreath said at Earshot’s Fremont offices. He added that his retirement is a big opportunity for Earshot to bring in some “new blood, fresh ideas, and fresh energy.”
Members of Earshot’s board of directors and staff are also feeling positive about the future of the organization. The volunteer board and members of staff have been preparing internally for Gilbreath’s retirement since before the pandemic. Over the last few years, they have developed a thoughtful vision for the organization's transition and future.
This plan includes working with an interim director to help support the staff during the transition and prepare for the next executive director. While also expanding marketing and fundraising efforts, and heightening an emphasis on artist advocacy and community engagement over the next few years.
“How do we now take this amazing, wonderful foundational legacy that John is leaving us with, and just take it off into the ether?” said Maurice James, president of the Earshot Jazz board of directors.
In the interim
On January 28, Earshot will celebrate Gilbreath's tenure with a retirement party at Town Hall Seattle. His last day will be January 31, the culmination of a multi-month transition.
Since October, Meriça Whitehall, senior associate for Valtas Group, a Bellevue-based consultancy that helps nonprofit organizations navigate leadership changes, has been serving as the organization’s interim director.
Whitehall is an experienced interim leader who’s worked with a host of local arts organizations including ArtsWA, STG’s Paramount Theater, and the Seattle Center Festál Cultural Festival Series. She’s also a longtime jazz lover.
“I am a jazz fan, and I’ve always been a fan of music. I grew up in a musical household,” said Whitehall, who’s 84-year-old father is still a performing gospel musician.
In her role as Earshot interim director, Whitehall has a few priorities. First off, she is making sure that there’s continuity and stability at Earshot during this time.
“For any organization, when they're experiencing leadership transition, it can be really unsettling for the staff. It can be really unsettling for the community that's served by the organization,” she said. “So my job really is to really understand the organization and to maintain what's good about the organization to provide a sense of stability.”
In addition to keeping up with the responsibilities of executive director, Whitehall meets with Gilbreath twice a week to preserve the institutional knowledge he’s built up over the last three decades. In their meetings, they discuss programming, the legacy of the founders, and the nuts and bolts of his work as executive director and festival programmer. Also on the agenda: What Gilbreath imagines his legacy has been, or will be.
By March, Whitehall will compile everything she’s learned into an extensive report that the board will use to hire the next executive director and fine tune the course they’ve already begun to chart forward. The board hopes to have the executive director position posted by April, and filled by next fall’s Earshot Jazz Festival.
“It's going to be challenging, sure, as John can't be replaced, and so...really understanding what we’ll need them to bring to the table is going be very, very important,” she said.
Securing the future
As the board looks at hiring new leadership and evolving the organization, Earshot’s financial future will be a high priority over the next few years.
Though Gilbreath is leaving the organization with “money in the bank,” James, the board president, is also concerned that a few large grants the organization previously received are about to dry up.
With that in mind, James said that the board is hoping to find a candidate who brings extensive marketing and fundraising experience. One who could pursue opportunities like multiyear corporate sponsorships or operating an Earshot venue, while delivering a fall festival that people plan their year around.
“You need someone that is not just a great curator of music and bringing diverse talent to bear, but you also need somebody that knows how to string all these other operational and logistical things together,” James said.
If finding these qualities in one candidate proves unlikely, the board may split leadership between two different executive directors with complementary skills. Either way, they also plan to bring in new board members to enhance the organization’s fundraising and marketing capacity.
“We just finished board competency work,” James said. “We’ve got a nice Swiss cheese right now. We have some pretty specific holes that we need to fill in in terms of rounding out the membership of our board in alignment with some of the things we want to do in the future.”
Scaling Earshot’s mission
James, who’s been on the board since 2018, hopes that by magnifying their fundraising and marketing efforts, Earshot can get to a stage where the festival is funded well into the future. That, plus the addition of some choice board-members, would give Earshot more time and resources to put towards other tenets in their organizational mission.
“In our mission, one of those core tenets, of course, is curating performances that draw audiences in to expand and connect this community that we love. It'll always be the mainstay of what we do,” James said. “But there are other parts of our mission that are important that we're not spending equal [time] on.”
According to James, the board would like to increase the organization’s focus on artist advocacy and community engagement. This may look like creating more musical educational opportunities for youth; giving more stages, promotion, and career development to local artists; enhancing Earshot’s connection to other local jazz purveyors and supporters; diversifying audiences; and potentially leasing their own venue or community hub.
In October, the board of directors announced one of the first steps toward scaling Earshot’s reach in these specific ways by unveiling The John Gilbreath Service Excellence Award. Next year, the board will select the first recipient of this award; someone from the jazz community who “exudes” Gilbreath’s tenacity and commitment to the music community, artist development and advocacy, and jazz preservation.
At the same time, there are no plans to let the Earshot Jazz Festival fall by the wayside. To the contrary, the board has a vision for making the festival more of a “destination jazz event” like the well-respected jazz festivals in Monterey, California and Montreal, Canada.
In good hands
As Gilbreath prepares to step down, he feels confident he’s leaving Earshot in capable hands.
“Everything is coming together to be right. Really, I couldn't ask for a better scenario,” he said.
Amongst board and staff, the excitement about Earshot’s future is palpable. James said he gets chills thinking about the organization’s direction, and longtime staff members like Earshot Managing Director Karen Caropepe share in that optimism.
“Change is hard, especially when someone as iconic as John is stepping away, but I’m truly excited to see the next vision take shape,” Caropepe said.
Whitehall, who is loving her time with the organization so far, is embracing the moment. With her extensive nonprofit experience, she’s struck by Earshot’s vibrant and positive culture.
“I really think there’s an incredible future that lies ahead for this organization,” she said.
In a time when many local arts nonprofits are struggling through leadership transitions, Earshot stands out. Careful, thoughtful planning is keeping the organization strong and on course. As James put it: “We feel like we’re on a really great trajectory.”
