Dan Morgenstern

Dan Morgenstern is widely recognized as one of America's leading jazz authorities, an honored NEA Jazz Advocate and the director of the Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies.

About Me

Dan Morgenstern is widely recognized as one of America's leading jazz authorities. He is director of the Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) at Rutgers University, a post held since 1976. IJS is the largest archival collection of jazz and jazz-related materials in the world.

Morgenstern has been intensely active in jazz for over a half century.

The historian, author, editor and broadcaster was named 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, for jazz advocacy. He received lifetime achievement awards from the Jazz Journalists Association in 2001 and Down Beat magazine in 2008.

His books, Living with Jazz (2004) and Jazz People (1976), both won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. A prolific annotator of record albums, he won seven Grammy Awards for best album notes. He is co-editor of the Annual Review of Jazz Studies and the book series, Studies in Jazz. Morgenstern also acted as senior adviser to Ken Burns' award- winning television series, Jazz, co-producer of the 1971 PBS series Just Jazz, and co-producer, co-host of Jazz from the Archives, a weekly feature on the Newark public radio affiliate WBGO since 1979.

Born October 24, 1929 in Germany, the son of novelist and critic Soma Morgenstern, Dan Morgenstern was raised in Austria, Sweden and Denmark. He came to the U.S. in 1947. He attended Brandeis University, wrote jazz reviews for the New York Post and reviewed records for the Chicago Sun Times. In 1964 he became New York editor of Down Beat, rising to become chief editor in 1967-1974.

Morgenstern's activities extended early to concert production. He was responsible for Jazz in the Garden, the 1961-1966 summer series at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and Jazz on Broadway, the 1963 mini- series remembered for pianist Earl Hines' comeback.

He is currently on the faculty of the masters program in jazz history and research at Rutgers-Newark. He taught jazz history at the Peabody Institute, at Brooklyn College, at New York University, and at the Schweitzer Institute of Music..

Morgenstern spearheaded record reissue productions for several landmark releases, including the 100-LP series The Greatest Jazz Recordings of All Time. He served as consultant to the National Endowment for the Arts. He was vice president of the Recording Academy; co-founder of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, and served on the boards of the New York Jazz Museum and the American Jazz Orchestra. A former member of the committee awarding Denmark's JAZZPAR prize, he remains a director of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, the Mary Lou Williams Foundation, The Statesmen of Jazz, and contributing editor of Jersey Jazz, journal of the New Jersey Jazz Society.