Detroit Sound Conservancy Rebuilds Legendary Jazz Stage for French Exhibition Preservationists have rebuilt the Blue Bird Inn’s stage and now plan for its future. Detroit, MI: In celebration of Detroit’s UNESCO Designation as a City of Design, Detroit Sound Conservancy (DSC) was invited last October by Public Design Trust with funding from Detroit Creative Corridor Center (DC3) to contribute to an exhibition exploring the future of work in Saint-Étienne at France’s 10th Design Biennale (March 9 - April 9). DSC is pleased to announce that it decided to rehabilitate and reactivate the iconic Blue Bird Inn Stage as a modular, mobile, programming and exhibit experience in order to tell the ongoing story of collaboration, creativity, and music in Detroit. The rebuilt stage was completed in December and is now in France. DSC Executive Director Carleton Gholz will travel to Saint-Étienne next week to oversee installation of the Stage’s historic elements. The Stage will return to Detroit in June. In addition, DSC is pleased to announce that the Stage will be featured in an exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) entitled Sonic Rebellion: Music as Resistance (September 8, 2017 - January 7, 2018). DSC are currently booking the Stage for programming opportunities for summer 2017 and winter 2018. The Blue Bird Stage is an exceptional example of African-American mid-century vernacular art and design as well as a launchpad for sonic and social rebellion during the Civil Rights movement in Detroit. Salvaged from the abandoned Blue Bird Inn on Detroit’s historic West Side, the Stage is hallowed cultural ground renovated to circulate within Detroit, throughout the United States, and around the world. Hundreds of jazz musicians stood and performed on its planks, in front of its backdrop, and for a largely Black working-class audience from the late 1950s until the club’s closing earlier this century. These musicians, including national leaders in modern music like Miles Davis and John Coltrane, explored bop, hard bop, and the emergence of free jazz on a platform that foregrounded Detroit’s commitment to serious listening over six decades. Local musicians, such as future Motown Records bassist (or Funk Brother) James Jamerson, who attended nearby Northwestern High School, apprenticed at the Blue Bird, learning the “Detroit way” to communicate with audiences and fellow musicians. The Stage was rescued and rebuilt by Detroit Sound Conservancy, a nonprofit founded in 2012 to preserve and celebrate Detroit’s varied musical legacies, from blues and jazz to techno and hip hop. The organization’s programming has included fighting to protect the historic United Sound Systems Recording Studios from an unnecessary highway expansion and the salvaging of the Graystone International Jazz Museum & Hall of Fame from oblivion in an abandoned downtown office tower. Later this year, the organization will celebrate the unveiling of a Michigan Historic Marker for United Sound, the 100th birthday of John Lee Hooker, and its fourth annual Sound Conference. DSC will celebrate its fifth birthday on April 24th.
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