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John Edward Hasse: "Jazz: The First Century"
John Edward Hasse is a music historian, pianist, and award-winning author and record producer. He serves as Curator of American Music at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, where he was founding Executive Director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, an acclaimed big band.
Hasse is the author of a critically acclaimed biography, Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, with Foreword by Wynton Marsalis. The New York Times called it "the first truly substantial book about Ellington," and Kirkus Reviews called it "brilliantly written." He is also the editor of a major new book, Jazz: The First Century, an illustrated history of jazz, with Forewords by Tony Bennett and Quincy Jones (William Morrow, April 2000). Library Journal called the book "a major contribution to the understanding of jazz."
Hasse is also the producer and annotator of a two-CD anthology, Beyond Category: The Musical Genius of Duke Ellington; His Greatest Victor, Bluebird, and RCA Recordings, 1927-1967 (BMG Records/Smithsonian Recordings).
At the Smithsonian, Hasse led the Institution's efforts to acquire the 200,000 page
Duke Ellington archive, and conceived and curated the traveling exhibition Beyond Category: The Musical Genius of Duke Ellington, which toured to 12 museums, and a smaller version that is circulating to 45 libraries. He also led the Smithsonian's initiative to acquire the archives of Ella Fitzgerald and co-curated an exhibition on her. Ella Fitzgerald: First Lady of Song.
Hasse is a contributor to seven encyclopedias, including The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, and the Microsoft Encarta CD-ROM encyclopedia. He is editor of Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music and producer-author of the book-and-three-disc set The Classic Hoagy Carmichael, which was nominated for two Grammy awards. He has also received two ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards for excellence in writing on music. Hasse earned a B.A. Cum Laude at Carleton College, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Indiana University.
For the Smithsonian, he is spearheading a jazz education initiative aimed at middle- and high-school students, and he co-developed the Website www.dellington.org, aimed at middle-school students and teachers. He serves on the federal New Orleans Jazz Commission and served as the principal advisor to the U.S. Postal Service on its series of American-music stamps that began with Elvis Presley.
A talented educator, he is a popular lecture and recitalist. He has presented programs throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, and has performed concerts of ragtime and jazz at colleges, festivals, and on television.
As an expert on 20th century American music, he has been interviewed on television (CNN, Headline News, PBS, CBS' Sunday Morning, Entertainment Tonight, etc.), on radio (National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Morning Edition, the Voice of America, BBC, etc.), and in newspapers (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, etc.).
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