Horace Silver and Sonny Rollins top the winners of the Jazz Journalists Association’s 2012 awards announced yesterday in New York City.
Lifetime Achievement in Jazz: Horace Silver
Musician of the Year: Sonny Rollins
Composer-Arranger of the Year: Maria Schneider
Up and Coming Artist of the Year: Ben Williams
Record of the Year: Sonny Rollins, Road Shows, Vol. 2 (Doxy Records)
Best Historic Recording/Boxed Set: Miles Davis, Bootleg Sessions, Vol. 1, Quintet Live in Europe 1967 (Columbia Legacy)
For a list of the winners in all 40 categories of the JJA awards, go here.
Congratulations to Marc Myers, whose superb JazzWax won in the jazz blog category, and to all of the winners.
The nonagenarian pianist presented de Barros with every biographer’s hope, unrestricted access to his subject’s personal papers and nearly unrestricted access to her private thoughts. He made the most of it, turning exhaustive research and hundreds of hours of interviews into a true story with the sweep of a novel. From the early discovery of McPartland’s musical gift through her wartime service, her ecstatic and stormy marriage to Jimmy McPartland, her growth as a pianist, her deep affair with Joe Morello, and the radio show that made her a national figure, she has had a fascinating life. It makes a splendid read.
Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band had three fewer musicians than most big jazz outfits. Its size permitted precision, flexibility and subtlety, yet the band had the power of sprung steel. In this concert from a half century ago, the CJB is as fresh as yesterday. Arrangements by Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, Al Cohn and Johnny Mandel set standards to which big band writers still aspire. Bassist Buddy Clark and drummer Mel Lewis inspired Mulligan, Brookmeyer, Conte Candoli, Gene Quill and Zoot Sims to some of the best soloing of their careers. This beautifully produced issue of the complete concert is a basic repertoire item.
It’s about time that they awarded master Horace Silver. It fills my heart with grief that the groundbreaking composer of “Song For My Father”, “Quicksilver”, “The Preacher”, and so many, many other great pieces is not well.
P.S. — Here’s the romping trio version:
To all other winners, too: Kudos!
Lots of big names, but few discoveries IMHO. What about Zoe Rahman’s terrific new album?
And congrats to Marc Myers as well. A worthy successor to you, Mr Ramsey, and A Blog Supreme.
Yet another wonderful Horace Silver tune, with lovely chord-changes, was the aptly-named “Peace.”
We are all here very glad that our fellow countryman and friend, photographer Pavel Korbut, is among the winners of the JJA’s 2012 awards.
Re: Horace Silver
It might have been a school cafeteria in Coulee City or Plain, or the Ephrata Elks Club, or the Vets Club in downtown Wenatchee, but Don Lanphere often finished a dance gig with several choruses of “The Preacher” and then went straight into “Show Me The Way To Go Home”, closely related to “The Preacher”.
I must really be out of it — I listen to mainstream jazz radio a lot (KCSM, Parlocha) and I go out to hear live music when it’s around, but I’ve never heard of many of the honorees. Ambrose Akinmusire? Rudresh Mahanthappa? J. D. Allen? Ben Williams? Maybe I should get out more.
I’m really pleased with recognition for Myers, Newk, Smulyan, Horace, Anat Cohen, and Regina Carter. But could someone please explain how ANY broadcaster has made a greater contribution to jazz in any of the past ten years than Bob Parlocha, with a really classy mainstream jazz radio show on hundreds of radio stations around the US and Canada, many of them streamed? And while the Granz bio is quite worthwhile, the Clark Terry bio is, like everything CT touches, just wonderful.