Jazz in January Inc dba Tucson Jazz Festival

Who We Are, What We Do

The mission of Jazz in January Inc, dba Tucson Jazz Festival is to influence the discovery and celebration of live jazz performance and music education through community engagement anchored by a world-class jazz festival in downtown Tucson.

The Tucson Jazz Festival (TJF) is an annual event in January that caters to all age groups with over 40+ performances and hundreds of world-class artists performing at historic performance venues in and around downtown Tucson. This year, our twelfth year, the festival will be held January 16th - 24th, 2026.

The TJF Education Program provides opportunities for students of all ages, teachers, and families, especially in local underserved neighborhoods. Participants are enriched through the multi-faceted programming TJF has offered from its inception.  This ever-emerging area of focus has hosted Artists in Residence, artist master classes, workshops, TJF Talks (new in 2025), and continuing education classes for students of all ages.  TJF has also offered student performances, one-on-one artist interactions, free festival concert tickets and opportunities for students to perform on stage during the festival with our world-class artists. 

Moving Forward

This year, in partnership with another local Tucson non-profit, we have created a new long-term sustainable music field trip program.  TJF will purchase the musical instruments used in this new program and the field trips will be to our partner organization.   To provide an inspiring hands-on musical experience and reach our $12,500.00 goal we need your support.      

We believe music is essential to life, offering countless benefits to ALL students. Jazz, in particular, has the power to inspire lifelong learning, creativity, and exploration.  

“Countless studies and my personal teaching experiences of over 25+ years conclude that the arts, and music in particular, are vital to a student’s full educational journey.  Creativity, compassion, empathy, work-ethic, community, and so many other key concepts to a well-rounded life/future work experience are strengthened with music.  You, our donors, make a huge impact to so many countless students.  We thank you for your continued support.”  - Khris Dodge, TJF Executive & Artistic Director

Testimonials

“[Bringing] music into our field trips, bringing music into our outdoor events, bringing music into our free days, making sure that there’s ways for us to expose our families and our community to the things that you’re [TJF] doing and to really bring about so many more engagement opportunities with music is huge for families.  Huge for kids.” - Hilary Van Alsburg, Tucson Children’s Museum Executive Director

“The impact of having that access to artists of that caliber to come through and be able to have some facetime with students is just tremendously amazing.”                                                                                                                                              - Morani Sanders, Director of Bands, Tucson High Magnet School

“We had kids growing produce, harvesting produce. And then for those families to see that produce come back to the school and prepared by amazing City of Gastronomy chefs and served up in an atmosphere that was electric with amazing music–it was an amazing community event.”                                                                                                                                                                         - Moses Thompson, UA School Gardens Director