An Archive · 1939 — 2021
Jim Knapp
Composer · Arranger · Trumpeter · Teacher
An archive for the music of one of jazz's best-kept secrets — built by the people who played it, for the people who care about it.
Listen →Jim Knapp was the architect of Seattle's modern jazz scene — a composer and arranger of rare imagination who taught for decades at Cornish College of the Arts and led the 13-piece Jim Knapp Orchestra for the last 25 years of his life. He worked in the orchestral lineage of Ellington and Gil Evans: melodic, warm, harmonically searching, and quietly virtuosic. Outside the Pacific Northwest he remained one of jazz's best-kept secrets. This archive exists to change that.
Jay Thomas
"Of all the many things I do financially and spiritually, the Jim Knapp Orchestra is at the top of my list. Jim Knapp is a writer with very few peers. He is as good as it gets in my opinion … I know Seattle is known for Nirvana and Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, but the real artistic giant — Jim Knapp — has been a well-guarded secret."
— Jay Thomas, from Life and Jazz Stories · read the full tribute