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Nine years on since its inception, founder Sarah Chaplin is handing the baton over to Danielle White, who runs Raestar and is known to many as an active entrepreneur and promoter with a wealth of knowledge and experience of the British jazz scene. Dani has been unofficially at the helm since March this year, but as from today she officially takes over the ownership and running of JAZZLONDONLIVE.
JAZZLONDONLIVE was set up in April 2016 by Sarah and Mick Sexton after Jazz in London ceased publication. The pair ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of an app to run alongside the website in order to reach a broader demographic. Having raised almost £10,000 from the ever-generous jazz community, they launched the JAZZLONDONLIVE app for Android and Apple devices in 2018, and this was then replaced by an entirely new post-COVID version. Sadly, Mick passed away in 2023.
Having taken the project as far as she can, Sarah (whose day job is a children’s author writing under the name Sarah Holding) felt it was time to find her successor, and on the recommendation of Chris Hodgkins, she approached Danielle White back in January of this year to see if it would be a good fit with her own services.
With its distinctive brand identity, an active user base of over 250,000 jazz lovers, and thousands accessing the app and website every week to find out what’s on, check details and book tickets, JAZZLONDONLIVE is the only service of its kind, listing over 5000 gigs a year and featuring over 175 different venues across London and the south east as well as 150+ artists. Dani has plans to develop it further, so watch this space!
Sarah says: ‘I would like to express my sincerest thanks to the jazz community for helping with the development of this valuable resource and for supporting it over the years. I would particularly like to thank my listings manager, Bibi Ayer, whom some know as Vikki Parker, who has been a fantastic person to work with and always did a brilliant job. Danielle is the perfect person to be taking over, and I have every confidence she will bring JAZZLONDONLIVE to new levels of success. I wish her all the very best.’
Please keep sending your gig listings every month to dani@jazzlondonlive.com using the same template, and if you have any questions or suggestions for Dani, please don’t hesitate to reach out to her. She will continue to run Raestar, her Jazz Promotions Consultancy and Project Management Agency alongside JAZZLONDONLIVE, and is already offering musicians bundles and deals that enable them to promote their forthcoming albums and tours across both platforms.
Sarah meanwhile is in the process of moving to Japan, and you can follow her exploits via Instagram @jazzsez, or stay in touch with her via jazzsez@gmail.com.