Jam sessions provide vital formal and informal knowledge that establishes a basis for community building and musical collaborations and a pipeline for professional development. In July 2019, I arrived in Salt Lake City to assume the position of visiting director of Jazz Studies at the University of Utah. I was welcomed into a tight-knit musical community of interrelated collaborators while navigating the opportunities and challenges of performing jazz music in the western United States. At the time, local saxophonist David Halliday was running the sole jam session in the city at a bar called Gracie's. However, I was surprised to note the lack of students in attendance. I came to learn that due to a combination of legal, religious, and cultural factors, performance in and around venues that serve alcohol is a major divider of the musical population of Salt Lake City. While musicians below the age of twenty-one are legally prohibited from performing at jam sessions hosted in bars, a larger segment of potential performers refrain from participating due to the sociocultural expectations surrounding alcohol propagated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.1 With the restrictions and challenges posed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,2 there was a need to create a new kind of jam session emphasizing access to musicians of all ages and experience levels and operating in support of and in tandem with Halliday's jam session.3slcJAMS was founded in collaboration with the University of Utah School of Music, the Salt Lake Academy of Music (SLAM), and the GAM Foundation. Operating as a monthly series, this jam session is designed to serve three key demographics: (1) high school students, (2) college students, and (3) local jazz musicians. These sessions are hosted at SLAM. The mission statement of SLAM states the goal of providing “inclusive, equitable access to musical instruments, instruction, and programs in rock, jazz, classical, bluegrass, pop, and electronic music.”4 Located in the vibrant Sugarhouse neighborhood, the venue comprises three studios equipped for rehearsals and recording sessions. Studio A, the largest space in the facility, hosts these performances and accommodates up to twenty-five performers at a time. Importantly, Studio A is outfitted with a complete backline including drum set, piano, and several guitar and bass amplifiers.5 The jam sessions are livestreamed via the SLAM and University of Utah Jazz Studies Facebook pages.6 Spearheaded by members of the University of Utah jazz community including myself, Chris Hough, Denson Angulo, Parker Swenson, Jake Saslow, and Chris Petty, slcJAMS sessions use the following template: a thirty-minute improvisation workshop, a thirty-minute short set of three compositions performed by the coaches, and a ninety-minute open jam session featuring material and concepts covered during the workshop with the faculty serving as coaches. Each month a jam session is held with a rotating lead coach.During the first session held on November 21, 2021, the improvisation workshop emphasized the blues form. Students were provided lead sheets for two riff-based blues compositions by John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins: “Mr. P.C.” and “Sonnymoon for Two.” Everyone in attendance jointly practiced the melodies, and students were divided into two groups to perform the two melodies simultaneously in counterpoint, demonstrating the ability to reference both melodies in the context of the same performance.7 The coaches encouraged students to develop their improvisations in reference to the melodies, performing sample solos only using notes and rhythms from the compositional material. This was followed by rounds of one-chorus improvisations by the students in attendance. The workshop concluded with a discussion of the major blues scale8 and an explanation of how it could be applied over the blues form.The next segment of the jam session was a short set performed by the coaches. In a traditional jam session, this group would be referred to as the house band. The leader maintains a dual role as both a performer and as an administrator for the jam session. The repertoire for the slcJAMS house band set is structured specifically to emphasize contemporary jazz from 1970 onward. Often, many of these compositions are not as easily accessible due to their uneven inclusion in collections such as the Real Book series.9 At the first jam session, the group performed “A Shifting Design” by Kurt Rosenwinkel, “Sing a Song of Songs” by Kenny Garrett, and “Memphis Redux” by Donny McCaslin. Lead sheets for each of these compositions as well as a list of recordings were distributed to the students.An open jam session followed the conclusion of the house band set. In addition to the student musicians in attendance, many local professional musicians—including saxophonist Chase Baird, trumpeter Tyler Webb, and guitarist Georgi Petrov—performed and shared feedback with the attendees. In order to ensure that everyone felt confident participating in this environment, the first composition performed in the open jam session was always one of the pieces that had been reviewed during the improvisation workshop. Musical selections during the course of the session included prototypical improvisational forms like blues and rhythm changes (“Cotton Tail” by Duke Ellington) as well as time-honored standards (“Blue Bossa” by Kenny Dorham). All participants were invited to learn and perform “Voyage” by Kenny Barron to close each evening in the series with the coaches.Jam sessions that explicitly kindle multigenerational collaborations are an exciting model for the future development of jazz communities. This format has been highly effective in balancing the needs of a diverse musical community and strengthening the connection between musical enclaves in Salt Lake City.