Blue Note Entertainment Organizes Hurricane Sandy Relief Efforts

Blue Note Entertainment Group continued its Hurricane Sandy relief efforts over the weekend with a trip to Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York. On Sunday staff from Blue Note Jazz Club, Blue Note Japan, Highline Ballroom, & B.B. King Blues Club drove to the area with a van full of volunteers, water & donations collected from employees at all the venues.

Directed by the Occupy Sandy Recovery in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, the group was sent to the Rockaways to deliver donations and seek a location to be of assistance. They were assigned to Parks and Recreation, specifically a children’s playground completely overrun with more than a foot or two of sand, rendering it unsafe to play in. They spent the afternoon digging out rubber mats and hauling sand from the playground along with other volunteers and Parks & Recreation staff.

In addition to this trip, a number of concerts at the group’s venues have allocated a portion of ticket proceeds to various organizations (American Red Cross, City Harvest & others). More relief efforts are planned in the coming weeks.

Blue Note Entertainment Group was founded in 1981 by Danny Bensusan with the opening of the legendary Blue Note Jazz Club in New York's Greenwich Village. Mr. Bensusan led the expansion of the Blue Note brand overseas by spearheading the opening of Blue Note jazz clubs in Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan, as well as in Milan, Italy. In 2000, Blue Note Entertainment Group opened B.B. King Blues Club in Times Square, NY, which continues to feature some of the biggest names in blues, rock, hip-hop and pop music. 2007 marked the opening of the Highline Ballroom, a state-of-the-art venue located in the heart of Chelsea that has hosted numerous marquee artists. In celebration of the Blue Note's 30th Anniversary in 2011, Blue Note Entertainment hosted the inaugural Blue Note Jazz Festival which featured over 80 performances in 15 venues throughout New York City during the month of June. In April, 2012, Blue Note Entertainment Group reopened the famEd Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C. which had been closed for thirty years and launched numerous careers. Subsidiaries of Blue Note Entertainment Group include the Grammy-nominated record label Half Note Records, whose catalogue includes over fifty titles recorded live at the Blue Note, as well as Blue Note Management Group, which boasts jazz legend McCoy Tyner as a client.