Philadelphia Jazz Hero
In an interview for the 20th anniversary of the website All About Jazz, the site’s founder Michael Ricci mused about the future of his creation, suggesting that some sort of three-dimensional cyber experience may replace the now-conventional web design and presence. Ten years later, it is safe to say that the cyber vision isn’t immanent, and All About Jazz (AAJ) and its sister site Jazz Near You are traditional 2D entities that continue to champion jazz (and other genres) to fans across the globe.
A native of the Philadelphia area, Ricci created the sites in 1995 as a way to incorporate his two loves—technology and music—into jazz’s infrastructure, connecting fans to musicians and vice versa. Originally used to test a project aimed at developing an online software sales business, the platform proved so successful that Ricci decided to spend time developing it. Since then All About Jazz and Jazz Near You have become the go-to sources for information about recordings, artists, and gigs.
Raised by a father who was a follower of classical and jazz music, Ricci was a young trumpet player who began collecting recordings during the 1970s, gravitating toward pop and rock acts that included horns. With the advent of the internet, the conjoining of the net and music became a focus of his attention. “All About Jazz started as a hobby,” he said in a 2015 interview. “It was built slowly over time, but I became more serious in 1997 and turned the corner in 2000, when we built the database.”
Ricci, who lives in a Philly suburb with his wife and pet dog, spends significant time managing the large cadre of volunteers who provide the site with concert information, album reviews, and other pertinent information, and writes his own column that covers a wide menagerie of music esoterica. The site, which is free, attracts over 20,000 views a day. At a time when arts journalism has largely faded from mainstream publications, AAJ has helped fill the void. Over the years thousands of jazz musicians have benefited from the site’s reviews and articles, as well as the writers and readers of those pieces – work that makes Ricci a true Jazz Hero.
—Jeff Cebulski
