NEA Jazz Masters to continue

As five more musicians formally receive their NEA Jazz Masters awards in New York tonight in the 30th such annual presentation, comes word that this will NOT be the final class of inductees.

It turns out the death of the program, as announced last spring, was premature. In short, Congress wouldn't let it go away. Howard Mandel has some of the detail here in his fine blog.

Congrats to this year's inductees, Jack DeJohnette, Von Freeman, Charlie Haden, Sheila Jordan and JimmyOwens, who is receiving the 2012 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy. The event is at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Hall.

A new NEA Jazz Master talks

I had a long conversation with trumpeter Jimmy Owens in preparation for a feature in the January issue of Hot House, which is just out. He had far more to talk about than there was space for in the profile. He’s getting the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy at the NEA Jazz Masters event January 10 at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall.

It is very well deserved. Owens’ involvement as an advocate regarding the rights of jazz artists led to the founding of the Jazz Musician's Emergency Fund, a Jazz Foundation of America program that helps individual musicians with medical, financial and housing assistance. He is also actively involved in issues related to pension benefits for jazz artists. Earlier, he co-founded The Collective Black Artists Inc., which kept 18 musicians working - touring up and down the East Coast and as far west as Chicago and Detroit. He also taught a business course on things that made a difference economically and control-wise for their lives.

Speaking off health issues, here’s what he also has to say about the current health of the jazz recording industry:

“There are no real jazz record companies and the majors call a few artists ‘jazz’ now and then,” Owens told me. “Artists are now saying, ‘I’m not going to wait any more. I’ll make my own.’ Now we have some really great self-produced recordings, and some pieces of shit. It is relatively inexpensive to make your own CD and press 500 or 1,000 copies. Sometimes they are really good, sometimes they are mediocre, and sometimes they are really bad. This is the state of the record industry and jazz. It’s not a very good state that we’re in today.”

Some would argue that the points he makes extend far beyond jazz.

Report from Tanglewood

My coverage of the 24th annual Tanglewood Jazz Festival in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts has just been posted at JazzTimes.com.

The five final main stage acts at Seiji Ozawa Hall (Saturday night through Sunday night) were all top shelf with Sing The Truth! providing a closing set that TJF regulars will be talking about for a long time.

Photo: Dianne Reeves, Angelique Kidjo and Lizz Wright of Sing The Truth!

Jazz Masters 2012 - the 30th and final class (updated)

Call it overdue honors for Vonski and more

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced the recipients of the 2012 NEA Jazz Masters Award — the nation’s highest honor in jazz. The five recipients are drummer-keyboardist Jack DeJohnette, saxophonist Von Freeman, bassist and composer Charlie Haden, singer Sheila Jordan and trumpeter Jimmy Owens (pictured). As a longtime educator, the latter will receive the 2012 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy.

Each will receive a one-time award of $25,000 and be honored at the annual awards ceremony and concert, produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center at its home, Frederick P. Rose Hall in Manhattan next January.

With this class, the NEA is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the NEA Jazz Masters Awards, which recognize outstanding musicians for their lifetime achievements and significant contributions to the development and performance of jazz. Ironically, the NEA Jazz Masters program is going away... making this its final class of recipients. The agency has proposed one program to honor artists in all disciplines. It's called the NEA American Artists of the Year awards.

This condensation means jazz artists will still have an opportunity to receive lifetime achievement recognition from the NEA, although their nominations will have to compete with other varieties of artists. We'll have to wait and see how that works out, just as the jury is still out over the Grammys consolidation hornet's nest this spring.