Cobi Narita, tireless jazz promoter and benefactor, dies at 97
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, November 22, 2024


Cobi Narita, tireless jazz promoter and benefactor, dies at 97
She produced concerts, helped musicians find work and started a women’s jazz festival. “Jazz in New York would not have been the same without Cobi,” one musician said.

by Richard Sandomir



NEW YORK, NY.- Cobi Narita, an indefatigable jazz impresario who for more than 40 years in New York City produced concerts, celebrated female artists in an annual festival and ran performance spaces, died Nov. 8 in Los Angeles. She was 97.

Her death, at the home of a granddaughter, was confirmed by her son Robert.

Narita — who grew up in California, spent most of World War II with her family in an Arizona internment camp for Japanese Americans and moved to New York in her early 40s — was a unifying force in local jazz circles.

“Jazz in New York would not have been the same without Cobi,” saxophonist Jimmy Heath told the website All About Jazz in 2006.

Loren Schoenberg, founding director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, called Narita a respected benefactor who provided much-needed opportunities for performers in New York — a role that was later more formally adopted, at least in part, by Jazz at Lincoln Center.

“She started at a time when there was no organized world of jazz institutions to give financial aid to musicians,” Schoenberg said by phone. “Everybody was out in the ocean doing their own little projects. But Cobi had all these things going, and she handed out money to support people.”

He added, “Her affect was low-key, but she had charisma and a gravitational field around her.”

In 1976, Narita started the nonprofit Universal Jazz Coalition, an umbrella organization that for about 10 years helped musicians manage their careers, promoted and produced concerts, and distributed a newsletter about local jazz events.

Seven years later, she opened the Jazz Center of New York in a rented loft in lower Manhattan, on Lafayette Street, where famous musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie as well as up-and-comers performed. In 2002, she opened Cobi’s Place, on West 48th Street near Seventh Avenue, as a venue for singers, instrumentalists and dancers.

Cobi’s Place stayed in business for about a decade. The Jazz Center of New York closed recently, but she had retired during the pandemic.

Over the years, Narita produced concerts and performances by, among others, singers Abbey Lincoln and Dakota Staton, saxophonist Henry Threadgill and trumpeter Clark Terry.

“Without producers like Cobi,” Lincoln told The Daily News of New York in 1993, “musicians like me would have a hard time having careers.”

In 1978, Narita organized the four-day Salute to Women in Jazz, which was renamed the New York Women’s Jazz Festival the next year and ran for more than 10 years. The event was held at the disco Casablanca 2, on the original site of the jazz club Birdland, on Broadway between 52nd and 53rd streets. The event made news when Robert Tirado, the disco’s owner, abruptly increased the rent after two successful nights. Narita could not meet his demand, and he locked the festival out.

Narita quickly regrouped. The musicians played outdoors near the club for the third and fourth nights, using electricity from a nearby parking lot, instruments and a public address system from the Sam Ash Musical Instruments store a few blocks away, and chairs from the Roseland Ballroom. Pianist Mary Lou Williams and singer Helen Merrill were among those who performed.

“A thousand people had to have lined up on the street,” Narita told All About Jazz. “It was amazing.”

George Wein, producer of the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, happened to be walking by and was stunned when he came upon the unscheduled street concert. He paid for Narita to use Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) for a bonus fifth night.

Narita’s financial backer in most of her ventures was Paul Ash, whose family owns the Sam Ash chain of musical instrument stores; Cobi’s Place was located above Manny’s Music, which was owned by Sam Ash. Narita and Paul Ash met in 1973 and married in 1989. He died in 2014.

“They were like magnets, man, from the start,” her son Robert said. “Soul mates.”

Nobuko Emoto was born March 3, 1926, in San Pedro, California. Her father, Kazumasa Emoto, was a farmer who brought fresh vegetables to Los Angeles markets. Her mother, Kimiko (Hamamoto) Emoto, was a homemaker.

Nobuko, her parents, her two sisters and her two brothers were among the estimated 120,000 Japanese Americans forcibly relocated during World War II to internment camps, mostly in Western states. Kazumasa Emoto lost his trucks, his equipment and his land.

During her incarceration at the Gila River Relocation Center in Arizona, Nobuko Emoto wrote a newsletter about goings-on at the camp.

She and her family were released in 1945, and she finished high school. She soon married Masao Narita, with whom she would have seven children. She entered Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania in 1948 and studied theater there, but left after one year.

After Narita and her husband divorced in the mid-1950s, she worked in various jobs in the Long Beach, California, area. Looking for a better career opportunity, she left for New York City in 1969, taking a job with the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Soon after her move, she was walking in Central Park when she heard jazz being played. One of the musicians, bassist Gene Taylor, urged her to volunteer for the renowned jazz ministry at St. Peter’s Church, on Lexington Avenue near East 54th Street. (In later years, the church would be the site of her annual birthday party, which featured live jazz.)

In 1972, Narita was hired as the executive director of Collective Black Artists, a repertory orchestra and support group for needy musicians. But after 2 1/2 years, after raising more than $100,000 for the organization’s projects, she was fired — because, she said, she was not Black.

“They really thought a male Black person should be in that job; it just looked better than an Asian woman,” she was quoted as saying in a profile of her on the Library of Congress website.

She recovered from that setback by studying corporate organization on a fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That program built her skills in time to start the Universal Jazz Coalition.

In addition to her son Robert, Narita is survived by her daughters, Susan Narita-Law and Judith, Charlene, Jude, Lisa and Patricia Narita; another son, Richard; 13 grandchildren; six great-grandchildren; and a sister, Therese Nakagawa.

Narita said one of her lasting goals was to help lesser-known women and budding young artists build jazz careers.

“There were a thousand struggling musicians who never got concerts or promotional help so they could build their own names,” she told The Daily News in 1982. “All these young people who seem to have come to a stopping point after going to school: Where do they play?”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

December 6, 2023

East Coast Premiere of Sharon Stone's Paintings at C. Parker Gallery

Guggenheim lays off 10 employees as museums face fiscal challenges

A logo to unite America? Good luck.

Amber fossils suggest male mosquitoes were once bloodsuckers

At the Kennedy Center, an ode to the arts, and a gentle jab at Biden's age

'Hockney/Origins' reveals unique perspective on artist's early career

The Royal Scottish Academy presents a new exhibition about William Gillies

New Orleans Museum of Art announces its major exhibitions for 2024

Replica of the original 'Big Brother' container on view at Museum Tinguely

Ward Moretti unveils exhibition of The Pieter and Olga Dreesmann Collection of works by Pablo Picasso

Exhibition showcasing the range of Saul Leiter's career is on view to celebrate 100th anniversary of his birth

After shakeup, Trinity Church appoints its next music leader

'Ahead of her Time: Pioneering Women from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century' now showing

"zrikha sheqi'att hashemesh" by Joel Mesler at David Kordansky Gallery to end this December 16th

First Klima Biennale Wien to open in April 2024

Artist reception and book signing for 'Keith Carter: Ghostlight' at PDNB Gallery

Five decades of work by Claude Viallat on view at Galerie Templon in Paris

Alicia Keys' 'Hell's Kitchen' to open on Broadway this spring

Robert Precht, producer of 'The Ed Sullivan Show,' dies at 93

Cobi Narita, tireless jazz promoter and benefactor, dies at 97

Siblings fight over estate of mother whose land yielded a T. Rex skeleton

National Gallery acquires work by Dolores "Loló" Soldevilla

The Morgan Library & Museum announces 2024 centennial campaign and programming

Things You Need to Know Before Proposing to Your Significant Other

Things to know about the Car Wrapping

Slot Tournaments Offer a Social Aspect to Gaming

The world's first gallery in a parking lot relies on young artists

The Intersection of Handcrafted Food and Creative Expression




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Holistic Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful