For more than a decade, Seed Artists has produced music and arts programming at the Montclair Public Library (MPL) centered on adventurous jazz and creative music. Free to the public. On October 12, 2025, we partnered with the MPL to open The Peter Bodge & Seed Artists Jazz Library, a collection of more than 600 jazz books donated by Peter, an educator, jazz historian and visual artist who curated our monthly listening sessions for two years. The collection is available to borrow through the interlibrary loan system to readers throughout New Jersey.

Peter embraced the full spectrum of jazz and creative music, and was an ambassador to the uninitiated. Always listening, reading and sketching. He wanted his collection to be accessible to everyone as a free community resource. Peter died on September 5, 2025, at age 87, a month before the opening. He would have reveled in the utter joy of the opening celebration: tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis leading a trio featuring Seed co-founder Pheeroan akLaff (drums) and the revelatory Jeong Lim Yang (bass); a rousing speech from Mayor Baskerville, and a ribbon cutting ending in the first books checked out that night.

Since then, the collection has grown to more than 750 volumes, including many rarities, and we have hosted a steady program of concerts, monthly listening sessions, film screenings and author talks. Guest performers and presenters in 2026 included Henry Threadgill, Tomeka Reid and Marty Ehrlich, FLUX Quartet, Scott Robinson, Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Steve Lehman, Adegoke Steve Colson, Veronica Nunn, José Beviá, and 17-year-old guitar phenom Marel Hidalgo in an organ trio with the great Billy Hart. We screened films on Sun Ra, Billy Bang, and the intersection of decolonialization and jazz.

We plan to add children’s creative projects and to document Montclair’s rich jazz history through video interviews and archival materials. And following major renovations beginning in 2027, the Jazz Library will have a dedicated space with not just an expanding book collection but listening stations stocked with LPs and CDs, and Peter’s arresting jazz portraits gracing the walls.

We are fortunate and proud to partner with the MPL, which has embraced some wild music and provocative ideas. And we are profoundly grateful for the many jazzheads and the jazz-curious who have taken this journey with us. We hope that you, too, will join us to explore and advance the music and its history, and learn from the artists who make it.