Jazz on Main Street Gainesville fuses music and art

When Jahmie Williams moved to Gainesville in December 2023, she felt a calling to bring her passion for the arts with her. 

Williams, a 60-year-old flutist and Gainesville Fine Arts Association member, hosted the first Jazz on Main Street event at the GFAA, located at 1314 S. Main St., Thursday night. The event featured a live painter and jazz jam session, inviting musicians to improvise with one another off various jazz standards. 

Six musicians, including a tap dancer and students from Sante Fe College and UF, led the jam session and played instruments ranging from saxophone, drums, bass, piano, trombone and guitar. Audience members and musicians were invited to join the session, often substituting for the lead players. 

Admission was $10, and all proceeds went to the GFAA Gallery while tips were given to the musicians. The event also offered free drinks for guests. 

Rather than just playing jazz music, Williams said she wanted to introduce jazz to other people and create spaces for it in the community.

“It's just been just this perfect storm of all these wonderful moments of just building relationships because that's all this is,” Williams said. “This is like building community, one note at a time.”

Williams, who joined the session with her Native American flute, became a musician 10 years ago when she began playing flute while recovering from surgery. She was the only female, the oldest person and the only flute player in her first jazz class, she said. 

Williams created Jazz on J Street in Lake Worth in 2016, an initiative that hosted jam sessions for local jazz artists. After moving to Gainesville in 2023, she continued the legacy by creating Jazz on Main Street, which she co-founded with musician Kevin Brown. 

“I came here not thinking that Gainesville was going to be the spot for me to do anything like what I did there,” Williams said. “So I was wrong … this is definitely the spot with all these creative musicians and artists.”

To find musicians to lead the Jazz on Main Street session, Williams spoke with Scott Wilson, the head of the UF Jazz Studies department, who connected her with graduate and undergraduate students interested in jazz and improvisation. 

Williams said she was thrilled to see an “inter-generational” group perform. 

“All of these musicians, they’re growing, developing, but just like our jazz history, the young people were the ones who were making things move and making things shake,” she said. 

Joshua Lumaban, a 19-year-old legal history sophomore, played the keyboard during the Thursday night jazz session. 

Lumaban has played piano since he was 5 years old, and he learned jazz piano from his mother, a jazz piano teacher, before being classically trained in middle school and high school. 

“It [jazz] was kind of forced on me from a young age, but then eventually, I started to enjoy it, especially after doing gigs and doing jam sessions just like this one,” Lumaban said. “It felt more natural, and it felt like something I just knew I was gonna do for the rest of my life.”

Jordan Mobley, a 24-year-old jazz composition major at Santa Fe College, has also been a musician for most of his life. Mobley has been drumming for 20 years and uses a “laid-back” approach when improvising and performing with a group, he said. 

“A lot of drummers, good drummers, will change dynamics, as opposed to playing really fast and wowing people,” Mobley said. “There's a time and place for that, but dynamically, jazz is more intimate, so I won't really jump out in front of everybody … it requires a lot of balance and sacrifice.”

Larry Newcomb, a jazz guitarist with a PhD in music, played guitar during the session. Newcomb said he and other jazz musicians aim to highlight the timeless nature of the jazz standards, or well-known songs, they use to improvise. 

While he used to be uncomfortable with improvisation, attending jam sessions has allowed Newcomb to familiarize himself with the art form and become more comfortable participating.

Having played music since he was 5 years old, Newcomb said he finds improvisation “very rewarding,” as it challenges him to delve deeper into a piece each time he plays it. 

“You never get tired of it,” he said. “It's like every time you play it [a standard], you can learn more about it, and you can find more interesting things to do. So, it's sort of an endless quest. It definitely keeps you humble … and it keeps you engaged, and it keeps you working at it.”

To carry the tradition of Jazz on J Street, Williams wanted to host the first Jazz on Main Street jam session in an art gallery and feature a live painter at the event, she said.

Williams selected Emma Jean Fulgham, a 29-year-old local artist who frequently paints at live music events, to paint a live image at the session. Fulgham said her style is influenced by the style of music around her

“There’s more of a flowy aspect to it, my brushstrokes tend to linger longer on the canvas,” Fulgham said.

The painting, which portrayed a red-crowned crane playing the saxophone, was auctioned off as part of a fundraiser for the gallery, which has faced losses in its operating budget. 

The gallery’s budget decreased after Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed $32 million in funding for the arts, 22-year-old agricultural communications senior Alanis Gonzalez said. Since losing $40,000 from its $120,000 operating budget, GFAA is working to host events such as these to build back its budget, a GFAA employee said.  

Williams said she wanted the jam session to be hosted in an art gallery because of the link between visual arts and jazz music. 

“That’s the only way I know how to do things,” she said. “Art and jazz always work together … I love learning. I love growing. I love improvising. That's what life is all about: improvising.”

Williams plans to host Jazz on Main Street events on the third Thursday of every month. The next date and location has not been announced yet. 

Contact Juliana DeFilippo at jdefillipo@alligator.org. Follow her on X @JulianaDeF58101.

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