The Jazz Network Foundation
The Foundation
A Detroit nonprofit where performance, mentorship, education, and cultural memory meet.
About the Jazz Network Foundation
Founded in 1992 by Bill Foster, the Jazz Network Foundation advances jazz, uplifts artists, preserves cultural history, and strengthens Detroit through the arts.
The organization has served as a dynamic platform for concerts, workshops, art exhibitions, youth programming, dance, poetry, theater, and community engagement. Its work begins with a simple conviction: jazz is a communal art form with the power to educate, inspire, and transform.
Mission and vision
The Foundation preserves, presents, and advances jazz in Detroit through performance, education, mentorship, and community engagement.
We envision a Detroit where jazz remains a vital public art, where emerging and established artists are connected across generations, and where music continues to serve as a source of cultural pride, education, and community transformation.
Turgo Bastien
The work
Performance
Presenting accomplished and emerging artists in contexts that honor the depth of their work.
Education
Masterclasses, workshops, youth programs, jam sessions, and public conversations.
Preservation
Keeping Detroit’s history present through archives, storytelling, images, film, and living practice.
Jazz Day in Detroit
The Foundation’s mission becomes most visible when Detroit’s history, master musicians, public space, and community pride converge in a single room.
Foundation Case Study · International Jazz Day · Detroit · 2014
Marcus Belgrave and Band at the Virgil Carr Center
For the 2014 International Jazz Day celebration in Detroit, Bill Foster organized a two-hour concert at the Virgil Carr Center that embodied more than three decades of work through the Jazz Network Foundation. The event brought nationally respected artists into a community-centered cultural space and presented jazz as both inheritance and living public art.
The ensemble featured Marcus Belgrave on trumpet, Bill Meyer on piano, Ibrahim Jones on bass, Kasan Belgrave on clarinet, and Djallo Djakate on drums, alongside other Detroit musicians. Their performance joined veteran mastery with a younger generation of artists, demonstrating the mentorship and continuity that define Detroit jazz.
A performance of Louis Armstrong’s Potato Head Blues became a focal point of the evening. Classic repertoire was not treated as a museum artifact, but as material for improvisation, dialogue, and renewal—a musical expression of Detroit’s resilience and the Foundation’s commitment to keeping jazz active in civic life.
Cultural leadership rooted in relationship
The Foundation’s leadership model is grounded in memory, mentorship, accessibility, and service. It understands that communities need spaces where excellence and welcome are not opposites, but partners.