The Jazz Awards -- a benefit for the Jazz Foundation of America's Musicians Emergency Fund as well as the JJA's own educational initiatives -- has also become a significant date on the jazz industry and community calendar. It celebrates excellence in music and journalism, 40 categories in all, and altruistic jazz activism from corporate officers (this year, HIP Health Plan's Arthur Barnes and E-Trade.com's Jarrett Lilien), health care givers (this year the doctors who treated Billy Higgins for liver cancer), and just plain folks (this year Sandy Jackson who works with the Veritas Foundation and LaRue Brown-Watson, a self-starter in jazz education). Since its origin at the Knitting Factory in 1996, the JJA's Jazz Awards remain the longest running, highest profile acknowledgement of jazz accomplishment that's independent of any single publication or binding commercial affiliations. Press for the Awards last year included news on the CNN crawl that Wayne Shorter was selected (by members' votes) Musician of the Year. The Awards have proved both prophetic and well-deserved: the JJA gave its “Up and Coming Artist" award to Norah Jones way before she got those Grammies, and last year honored Cecil Taylor for his Lifetime Achievement.
The Awards are credible because the Jazz Journalists Association is a professional organization, with about 450 writers, photographers, broadcasters and new media freelancers and staffers making up its worldwide membership (there are also support members who don't vote -- mostly institutions like Jazz@Lincoln Center, jazz record companies and musicians). Besides bringing attention to the great work of the Jazz Foundation's Musicians Emergency Fund, the JJA puts on free enrichment programming and panel discussions at jazz festivals (in Newport, Chicago, Monterey, Vancouver, San Francisco, Cleveland, D.C., etc.), conferences (regular presence at IAJE) and schools (such as New York's New School, where the Jazz Matters series gets specialsts to speak on topics of interest to journalists, musicians, students, teachers and audiences alike).
The JJA produces a highly informative, interactive website (www.Jazzhouse.org) and a quarterly journal (Jazz Notes). The JJA has helped its members get health insurance and offered information on legal issues concerning electronic rights and copyright infringements, contracts and career advancement. The members' database connects journalists immediately, and the JJA (a not-for-profit 501C3 tax-exempt corporation) has reached out to new contacts in Western and Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, South America and Australia as assiduously as it has to BETJazz, WBGO, KCSM, WGBH, WFPF, the JAI, the Jazz Institute of Chicago, SFJazz, the Louis Armstrong Archives at Queens College, et al.
Membership and further information about the JJA is available at Jazzhouse.org -- scroll down the entrance page to the “Office" and click on “How to join." Info and tickets for the Jazz Awards event at B.B. King's cost the public $150 (nominees get 2 free, JJA members pay $40 each), available by charge from www.JazzJournalistsAwards.com. Press information is available from Don Lucoff, [email protected]; other JJA info is available from the organization's president Howard Mandel, [email protected].
There will also be a West Coast Jazz Party this year -- the JJA's second -- at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles on Monday, June 21 from 7 to 10 p.m., with music by the Bennie Maupin Ensemble, Vinnie Golia and Friends, Roberto Miranda's band and vocalist Dwight Trible. Tickets are also available from JazzJournalistsAwards.com, for $75 apiece.
The Jazz Journalists Association has a longterm commitment to the music and the people who take it seriously, putting their knowledge and opinions in print, on the airwaves, and on the Internet. But as the Jazz Awards events demonstrate, jazz journalists also know how to have fun.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
