• Home
  • About
    • Jazz Beyond Jazz
    • Howard Mandel
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

Across North America, 29 “Jazz Heroes”

Twenty-five years ago the Jazz Journalists Association began to identify and celebrate activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz as members of an “A Team,” soon renamed “Jazz Heroes.” Today the JJA announced its 2025 slate of these Heroes, 29 people across North America who put extraordinary efforts into sustaining and expanding jazz in its various forms.

So who are they? Musicians who double or triple as educators, presenters and support-group organizers. Festival producers from Tucson to Northampton, from the San Diego-Tijuana Borderland to Guelph, Ontario. The writer and scholar who founded Jazz Appreciation Month, the Jazz Foundation of America’s Executive Director and the woman whose persistence has paid off in greater opportunities and visibility for other women as players and stars. See them all JJAJazzAwards.org/2025-jazz-heroes.

This year’s Jazz Heroes include:

· Bobby Bradford, Los Angeles brassman who at age 90 continues to perform and lecture despite losing his home in the Altadena fires;

· Julián Plascencia, co-founder of the San Diego-Tijuana International Jazz Festival;

· John Edward Hasse, biographer of Duke Ellington, Wall Street Journal contributor, and Emeritus Curator of Music at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where 30 years ago he initiated April across the globe as Jazz Appreciation Month;

· Joe Petrucelli of the Jazz Foundation of America, who’s partnered with the Mellon Foundation on the new Jazz Legacy Fellowships for lifetime achievements;

· Ellen Seeling, now based in the Bay Area, whose steadfast playing — she broke the Latin Jazz gender biases — and advocacy for women won establishment of blind auditions for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and ever more recognition that women can and do play jazz — well!

Trumpeters abound this year: Besides Bradford and Seeling, there’s Gregory Davis of the Dirty Dozens Brass Band, booker of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival contemporary jazz stage, and Mark Rapp, whose ColaJazz non-profit has amped up the scene in Columbia, South Carolina. But rhythm rules: Drummer-percussionist Jazz Heroes include Alan Jones of Seattle, Kenny Horst of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Clare Church (also a saxophonist, vocalist and partner in a Denver metro venue with her husband, Pete Lewis), David Rivera of San Juan, Puerto Rico and washboard enthusiast Jerry Gordon of New York’s Capital District.

Vocalists Karla Harris (Atlanta), Pamela Hart (Austin) and Kim Tucker (Philadelphia) do a lot more than simply — but beautifully — sing. Stephanie Matthews (Columbus, Ohio) has adapted STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) into STEAM — adding “A” for “Arts.” Brinae Ali of Baltimore turns tap-dancing into a multi-dimensional modern form. John Foster is invaluable to operations of the Jazz Institute of Chicago. Robert Radford has raised significant funds for Seattle jazz spheres. Amber Rogers and Daniel Bruce started a Cleveland jazz fest from scratch. And so on. The personality-profiles posted with portraits of each of the JJA’s 29 Jazz Heroes detail how they’ve distinguished themselves by leaning in to what jazz can do to inspire creativity, promote fellow-feeling and enhance life.

Others are:

· Sheila Anderson, the Hang Queen of WBGO-FM

· Ruth Griggs, Northampton Jazz Festival

· Ajay Heble, International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation

· Khris Dodge, Tucson Jazz Festival

· Ralphe Armstrong, Detroit-boosting bassist

· Wes Lowe, beloved West Palm Beach jazz teacher)

The JJA — an independent nonprofit with 250 international members, currently — believes Jazz Heroes are essential to the health of the overall jazz ecosystem, and supports local efforts to celebrate them. The organization — an independent non-profit promoting the interests of writers, photographers, broadcaster and other media workers covering jazz — will produce an online Heroes event, April 17th, and local presentations of Jazz Hero certificates. Details aren’t set yet, but will be found soon at JJAJazzAwards and JJANews.

Every music genre — indeed, every art form — survives due to the efforts of people like these Heroes, working behind the scenes, often for little financial reward, because they love what they do for the art they advance. Just like the artists themselves.

36 Jazz Heroes in 32 US cities – and there are many more

The Jazz Journalists Association announces the 2023 Jazz Heroes — “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz,” formerly the A Team — emphasizing as it has annually since 2001 that jazz

is culture that comes from the ground up, by individuals crossing all demographic categories, working frequently with others and beyond basic job definitions or profit motives to sustain and spread the vital music born in America. This year the JJA (a non-profit professional organization for journalists covering jazz) is honoring 36 such Heroes in 32 US cities. If we had the capacity, we could do twice that number. Indeed, here’s the Honor Roll of all “A Team” members and Jazz Heroes since the initiative began.

Personality profiles and portraits of each Hero, written by members of their communities, are posted at JJAJazzAwards.org. Besides being hailed online, which the JJA hopes will interest local media in advancing the human interest elements of stories about neighbors putting themselves out for the sake of creative music, Heroes receive engraved statuettes at events in their localities during the summer.

The Heroes, by city:

Albuquerque – Mark Weber, radio-show host, writer-photographer, record producer

Atlanta – Dr. Gordon Vernick, trumpeter and educator at George State University

Austin – Pedro Moreno, founder of Epistrophy Arts

Baltimore – Eric Kennedy, drummer and pre-K-to-college teacher/mentor

Boston – Carolyn J. Kelley, Jazz All Ways/Jazz Boston 

Bronx – Judith Insell, Bronx Arts Ensemble director/programmer, violist

Brooklyn – Andrew Drury, drummer, Continuum Arts & Culture 

Chicago — Carlos Flores, Chicago Latin Jazz Festival curator

Cleveland – Gabriel Pollack, Bop Stop, Cleveland Museum of Art

Dallas – Freddie Jones, trumpeter, founder of Trumpets4Kids

Denver – Tenia Nelson, keyboardist-educator, A Gift of Jazz board member

Detroit – Rodney Whitaker, bassist and educator

Hartford – Joe Morris, guitarist/mentor

Indianapolis – Herman “Butch” Slaughter and Kyle Long, preservationists on radio

Los Angeles – LeRoy Downs and Frederick Smith, Jr., Just Jazz media partners

Minneapolis-St. Paul – Janis Lane-Ewart, public radio stalwart

Missoula – Naomi Moon Siegel, trombonist, Lakebottom Sounds

New Hampshire-Vermont Upper Valley – Fred Haas and Sabrina Brown, Interplay Jazz & Arts Camp

Morristown – Gwen Kelley, HotHouse magazine publisher

New Orleans – Luther S. Gray, percussion and parade culture preservationist

New York City – Brice Rosenbloom, Boom Collective producer

Philadelphia – Homer Jackson, Executive Director, Philadelphia Jazz Project

Pittsburgh  Gail Austin and Mensah Wali, founders of the Kente Arts Alliance

Portland OR – Yugen Rashad, host at KBOO community radio

San Francisco Bay Area – Jesse “Chuy” Valera, Latin jazz maven, KSCM host

San Juan – Ramon Vázquez, bassist and community organizer

San Jose – Brendan Rawson, Executive Director San Jose Jazz, producer of Ukraine exchange project

Sarasota – Ed Linehan, Sarasota Jazz Club president

Seattle – Eugenie Jones, singer-songwriter, Music for a Cause

Stanford – Fredrick J. Berry, trumpeter-educator, College of San Mateo + Stanford Jazz Orchestra

Washington, D.C. – Charlie Young III, coordinator Instrumental Jazz Studies, Howard Univ.

Wilmington NC – Sandy Evans, North Carolina Jazz Festival, Jazz Lovers newsletter

More information about the campaign, part of the JJA’s programs aligning with Jazz Appreciation Month and International Jazz Day, is reported at JJANews.org. One exciting tidbit is that the JJA’s 2023 Jazz Heroes were announced on April 6 — 100 years to the day after King Joe Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band with Louis Armstrong recorded an early high of jazz development, the classic “Dipper Mouth Blues.”

\

Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

@JazzMandel

Tweets by @jazzbeyondjazz

More Me

I'll be speaking:

JBJ Essentials

Archives

Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license