A trombonist in Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool band, memoirist whose The Parisian Jazz Chronicles set a standard for wit and candor in self-examination, and writer for the International Herald Tribune and Bloomberg News, Mike Zwerin died April 2 in Paris, where he’d lived since 1969. Recipient in 2009 of the Jazz Journalists Association’s Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism Award, Mike was an inspiration ever since I read his reports from the jazz scene in the Village Voice in the 1960s, and I’m glad to say I got to know him as a friend.
Jazz journalists confer with APAP, NEA
The Jazz Journalists Association‘s five days of programming in coordination with the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference and Nat’l Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters events was a raging success on several fronts. Activities included the educational, informational, musical, productive and social. Overall, the JJA conference counted approximately 100 participants.
Arts Presenters meet Jazz Journalists
The Jazz Journalists Association has scheduled a multi-faceted professional conference for Jan 8 – 12 in NYC, concurrent with the Association of Performing Arts Presenters annual conference (which is producing a Special Focus on Jazz), the two-night multi-venue Winter Jazzfest, one-night but multi-stage globalFEST, and the Nat’l Endowment of the Arts’s presentation of 2010’s Jazz Masters. It’s the first time the JJA (of which I’m president) has worked in conjunction with APAP and the NEA to bring the people who disseminate music news together with those who seek to make it.
Jazz best lists of 2009
Jazz journalism and the NAJP’s arts journalism summit
The Jazz Journalists Association, of which I’m president, has hope to produce a nationwide conference on media transitions and how currently active professionals cope with them. Today’s National Arts Journalism Program’s summit raises many of the issues and even more questions that challenge my colleagues and I. So I’m going to do some live blogging here, posting a succession of comments while in the lecture hall of Columbia U’s j-school with about a dozen other journalists, watching the summit taking place at the USC Annenberg Center in LA. Here we go, starting with my reaction to the first hour of the summit’s content (the tech’s working pretty well!) Â
Les Paul’s tongue
In 2004, photog Gene Martin asked the guitarist/inventor who’d just received the Jazz Journalists Association’s “A Team” award for activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz, to pose for a portrait. . .
Zx1 pocket camera stars at 2009 Jazz Awards!
I love My Youtube! — now hosting video clips from my handy new Kodak go-anywhere device of jazz celebs, players and presenters at the Jazz Journalists Association’s 13th annual Jazz Awards party at the Jazz Standard (NYC) June 16, shot by debuting cinematographer R. Mandel.
Happy and sad news updates
Jazz Beyond Jazz was named Blog of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association at the Jazz Awards on Tuesday — and Tina Marsh, driving force of Austin creative music, died that day, too.
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Announcing 13th annual JJA Jazz Awards nominees and gala
The Jazz Journalists Association — of which I’m president — has announced finalist nominees in 42 categories of excellence in jazz music, recording, presenting and journalism at a new website, www.JazzJournalists.org — which also details who’s playing at the Jazz Standard (NYC) cocktail barbeque where winners will be announced on June 16, 3 – 6 pm. and lets you buy tickets to the event.
What’s a Jazz Award? I’m deep into it, but why should you care?
Recent NEA grants-getters win again in Arts Recovery act
The National Endowment of the Arts’ first program of the Obama “Recovery Act” focuses on the preservation of jobs in the arts. But it upholds an adage quoted by Billie Holiday in “God Bless the Child“: “Them that’s got shall get.” Applicants must be organizations that have received NEA grants during the immediately prior four years (since 2006). The NEA’s announcement is crystal clear:
[R]ecogniz[ing] that the nonprofit arts industry is an important sector of the economy the Arts Endowment has designed a plan to expedite distribution of critical funds for the national, regional, state, and local levels for projects that focus on the preservation of jobs in the arts. . . This program will be carried out through one-time grants to eligible nonprofit organizations. . . All applicants must be previous NEA award recipients from the past four years. . .Â
This decision is understandable enough; the NEA may want to ensure that organizations it has supported already aren’t going to fold, rendering its previous assistance irrelevant, and if it wants to put money to work quickly, organizations that have already been vetted in the grants-awarding process are surer bets than those organizations needing to be scrutinized from scratch. Nor do I carry any brief against the NEA’s actions during the second term of President George W. Bush — NEA Chairman Dana Gioia was one of the most successful leaders of the Endowment in its distinguished history, turning around Congressional hostility that somehow surfaced during the term of President George H.W. Bush, managing against inestimable odds to promote literacy, Shakespeare, arts journalism and, yes, jazz.Â
But from the point of view of a mostly volunteer administrator of a non-profit arts organization that after 20 years of self-supporting activities is just now making its first bid for grant funding to the NEA (the Jazz Journalists Association, of which I’m president, is applying this month for $s to produce a major conference on jazz journalism early in 2010) it’s disconcerting that as far as salaries for hard-pressed non-profits go, newcomers may not apply. Maybe the NEA’s next initiative could encourage new groups and new arts jobs? Wouldn’t that empower change? And disprove the second line of Billie’s “God Bless the Child” couplet: “Them thats not shall lose”?
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