Playing for Time

When Oxenhorn took over in 2000, she walked into the foundation’s new 48th Street office, one room filled with boxes. She was the only employee and began handling three needy cases a day. The foundation had $7,000 in the bank and was dealing with 35 cases a year.

The number of cases has almost doubled every year since. The year before Hurricane Katrina, the foundation handled 500 cases. In the past two years since Katrina, they’ve handled 3,000 emergency cases, most of them from New Orleans. Oxenhorn now travels to New Orleans about five times a year to coordinate new living arrangements for large families or to find a new dog for a musician’s children. Oxenhorn is informed of most situations by friends of the musicians in need. “Now, almost everyone knows about the organization,” Oxenhorn said. “And if they don’t, their friends do.”

Oxenhorn measures her impact not by how many musicians her organization helps, but by her success in finding long-term solutions. In the last seven years, the foundation has not lost anyone who has come for help in response to eviction or homelessness.

Though the caseloads have skyrocketed, the staff still remains small. Oxenhorn recently created another full-time position and three other positions in the last few months, bringing the employee total to 12: three full-time, three part-time, five specialized positions and her first assistant in seven years, a former road manager for the Rolling Stones.

Oxenhorn is the central nervous system of the organization. Her BlackBerry, with a 6,000 minute-a-month phone plan she almost surpasses, allows her to be in three places at once, on call at all times, handling about 50 calls a day. “The same way you call your mother every few weeks, I call all these musicians to see how they’re doing,” Oxenhorn remarked. The phone rarely leaves her side, usually gripped the way a trumpeter would hold his horn.

Righteous charity was not always her job, but always part of her character. Oxenhorn, a professional ballet dancer in New York City at age 14, battled depression as a teen after a career-ending knee injury. Once, calling a suicide hotline for help, she ended up caring for the depressed suicide counselor on the other end. She was offered a job just days later.

Oxenhorn was on her way to a career in unconventional human aid. When she was in her 20s, she ran a boarding school out of her house for children with drug addictions. Then, in 1989, Oxenhorn co-founded the homeless-run newspaper Street News, whose vendors got to keep the dollar they made selling each copy. She came to the Jazz Foundation after replying to a help-wanted ad. “Without Wendy,” Jimmy Norman says, “and I’m not the only one, a lot of people would be in trouble,.” Norman declared.

The Jazz Foundation of America does not receive any government funding, which would require grant applications. To apply for grants, the foundation would have to hire another full-time staff member solely for applications, and it cannot afford to do so. Instead Oxenhorn takes an organic approach; all their money comes from private donations. She says: “It’s much easier to go to a lunch with the CEO of a corporation and get 10 to 25 or more thousand dollars that week from someone who is moved by the cause than it is to write a grant and wait for six months to a year.” Prince is even dedicating 1 percent of his new perfume’s sale to the Jazz Foundation of America.

Some celebrities and jazz legends are involved in the foundations board of directors: members now include former New York Mayor David Dinkins, actor Danny Glover, music journalist Nat Hentoff and musician Jimmy Owens.

A lot of the annual budget also relies on the major fundraisers organized throughout the year. The most successful, A Night in Harlem was held at the Apollo Theater last May. It was hosted by Bill Cosby, and raised $1.5 million. Events such as fundraisers not only raise money, but they also serve as paying gigs for musicians like Jimmy Norman.

Jazz Foundation of America musicians also get a chance to play, without pay, every Monday at Penang’s, a club and restaurant around the corner from Norman’s apartment. Musicians gather at around 8 to jam for four hours. For some this is their only gig.

The foundation has also established the Jazz in the Schools programs, which pays aging musicians to play in school programs during the day, when it’s easier for them to travel. The program pays minimums of $175 for bandleaders and $90 for other musicians.

Funds that are raised go mostly towards rent payments and hospital bills. The foundation is currently paying the monthly $300 rent for a 78-year-old jazz pianist’s assisted-living home after he was evicted from his 15th Street apartment. His landlord allegedly paid another tenant to claim the musician, who played under the tutelage of Thelonious Monk, was moving furniture loudly after midnight, even though he was frail and notoriously in bed by nine every night.

Upon learning he was being evicted, the musician fainted, was hospitalized, and quickly moved to a nursing home, days before Oxenhorn found him. Oxenhorn takes “a Southern approach” when meeting musicians for the first time: the calming effect of a Mr., Ms., Sir or Ma’m, as a youth would to an elder. Each person is unique, and so is her care.

In the case of Monk’s protegé, Oxenhorn was able to buy him a keyboard for his birthday. She found it tied to the musician’s leg so that his two roommates in his temporary living situation, both suffering from dementia, wouldn’t steal it. The roommates would howl obscenities throughout the night.

Within a week, Oxenhorn found him a room in the assisted-living home. “These musicians, in my mind, have given us a very rich world and a beautiful life,” Oxenhorn said. “And to have them suffer this way is just unforgivable.”