The origins of the name “Jazz on Jay” can be traced back four decades. Tim Coakley, the legendary Capital Region jazz historian and one of the first Jazz on Jay performers, says concerts began in the 1980s. Sponsored by the Jay Street Merchants Association, it ran during the evenings when stores would be open. But economic turmoil took its toll and the series ended.
When Maureen Gebert visited Boston’s Quincy Market and the Faneuil Hall Marketplace in the mid-1990s, she noticed how the downtown area came alive with music. “Musicians just set up outside shops and I realized it was something we could do on Jay Street,” said Gebert, who started working for the City of Schenectady’s development office in 1995. Others liked the idea, so Gebert sought out musicians for a six-week series of 90-minute concerts on Wednesdays.
“Believe me, this was a low-budget endeavor. I went up and down the street asking shop owners to put chairs out. A few businesses even contributed money so we could pay the musicians. One of the first groups was the Terry Gordan Quintet, who drove up from Schoharie,” Gebert said. “I knew it was working when one day I was watching from a distance and a woman came up to me and said, ‘We have this every week, isn’t it wonderful?’”
Gebert applied for a Schenectady County Initiative Program grant. “Since I had to have a name for the event to apply, I called it Jazz on Jay, not always jazz, always on Jay,” Gebert said, noting that with Proctors hosting the rain location, “the reverse is true now—always jazz—not always on Jay.”
Gebert credited Karen B. Johnson, former Schenectady Mayor and longtime Proctors staffer, “for taking pity on me and helping to really turn it into a series. Both Karen and I wanted this series to be an opportunity for the younger musicians, because we had such talented kids in our schools,” Gebert recalled.
In those early years, concerts started at noon on Wednesdays. In 1999, the series moved to Thursdays.