Jazz enthusiast Ollie Rosenblatt is doing his bit to bring the genre to a younger audience. A music student at Leeds University, Mr Rosenblatt, 21, runs his own jazz promotions company.
He has teamed up with the London Jewish Cultural Centre (LJCC) to present a variety of different jazz acts at their venue at Ivy House, north London.
He tells People: “The LJCC is a great provider of education and culture so I thought it would be a good opportunity to work together and open jazz up to a wider audience.”
He has also revived one of jazz’s most famous venues, the Lund theatre at his old school, UCS, in Hampstead.
Mr Rosenblatt, who plays the trumpet, has been into music from a young age. “I have grown up with it. My dad is a solicitor but also an opera buff and a singer, and my mum is a great jazz lover.” He adds: “I am a big fan of the way jazz is formed; the melody, the harmony and the whole entertainment factor. It’s very fast paced and energetic.”
His overall aim is to make it more accessible to younger people.
“In the 1940s and 50s, young people would go and listen to jazz and get excited by it.
“I want to try to recapture that.”
And Mr Rosenblatt is certainly giving it a good go.
Together with the LJCC, he recently presented an evening of jazz with Alec Dankworth’s Spanish Accents band.
He has also lined up US trumpet player Jeremy Pelt and 82-year-old British jazz doyen Sir John Dankworth — believed to be the only jazz musician to have been knighted — for live gigs at Villandry Jazz in the Lund.
Mr Rosenblatt lives in central London.
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