The National Endowment of the Arts has doubled down on celebrating jazz beyond "jazz" -- music that has exploded historic parameters or preconceptions of "jazz" conventions -- by naming as 2016 Jazz Masters the saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp -- both protégés of the late, great John Coltrane -- and Gary Burton, an innovator of technique and content who's embraced pop, country, folk and rock influences, studio experiments and classical finesse in creation of his own original sound, taken up with pleasure by musicians and listeners … [Read more...]
NEA ends Jazz, Folk, Opera awards for “full range of American artists”
National Endowment for the Arts' FY-12 budget eliminates a 30-year-old Jazz Masters Awards program, and special recognition with National Heritage Fellowships and Opera honors, in favor of Artist of the Year Awards available for the entire spectrum of performing artists (all forms of music and theater as one). Here's the NEA's statement, issued through a spokesperson, regarding its "modification of honorifics," in response to some issues I alluded to yesterday, which seem sure to reverberate with diverse effects throughout the U.S.'s far-flung … [Read more...]
Who decides who’s an NEA Jazz Master
The National Endowment of the Arts panel determining recipients of the annual Jazz Masters Fellowships is a small one. In the interest of transparency, the NEA has supplied the names of panelists who chose the class of '09. It comprises five previously named Fellows, one "layperson," one independent record producer, and two longtime jazz adminstrator-activists (who both happen to be honorees of the Jazz Journalists Association's "A Team").Of course, if John McCain becomes president, it's all moot (as Lee Rosenbaum reports, the GOP has no arts … [Read more...]