Forrest Who?
Forrest Dylan Bryant is a freelance jazz journalist and broadcaster living in the San Francisco Bay Area. His reviews, profiles and interviews have been published in several leading jazz publications, including JazzTimes and Down Beat magazines, the websites All About Jazz and JazzWest, the Jazz Journalists Association's Jazz Notes journal, the Jazz Education Journal, and Jazz Improv magazine.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Forrest received exposure to the arts from infancy. As a child he was involved in several avant-garde theatrical productions (including an improbable casting as Dr. Van Helsing, nemesis of Dracula) and was a member of the prestigious Academy Boys Choir. He also loved to write, progressing from stilted sci-fi stories and parody comic strips to award-winning high school essays on history and international relations. Musically, Forrest's youthful allegiances were split between Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald on the one hand, DEVO and Kraftwerk on the other, with Thelonious Monk and Sun Ra creeping around the edges.
Forrest made his first foray into broadcasting at Stanford University, as a "veejay" for a local cable television station. But he dropped out of college after two years, gradually drifting eastward towards New York City... and an epiphany.
Although he was always fond of jazz, it was a chance encounter with Ahmad Jamal's recording of "Poinciana" that transformed that fondness into a passion. Forrest began listening to jazz constantly, and developed a deep desire to share the joy he discovered there. On his return to California in 1999, Forrest revisited Stanford and joined the university's community radio station, KZSU-FM. His weekly program, "No Cover, No Minimum," has aired on KZSU ever since, blending jazz with blues and world music. He is also the station's world music director.
Forrest's affiliation with the Jazz Journalists Association began at the 2003 IAJE conference in Toronto, where he participated in the JJA's first annual "Who Asked You, Anyway" workshop for aspiring critics. His overnight review of a Denise Jannah concert was selected as the best of the bunch by a panel of veteran writers, and Forrest went on to serve as a panelist himself at the IAJE workshops in 2005, 2006 and 2007. In 2005 he became art director of Jazz Notes, the JJA's quarterly journal, and at the end of that year he was elected to the JJA's Board of Directors for a two-year term.
When he's not writing or spinning records, Forrest works as a website editor for the Motorola corporation. Juggling writing and radio duties with a demanding full-time "day job" is a challenge, but somehow it all works out. Just don't tell his boss about the blog...
Up to Home Page »
