Text by Augusta Palmer
It was an honor and a pleasure to attend this year’s Jazz Journalists Association Awards on June 11th. The ceremony, held this year at City Winery, is a benefit for the JJA, an organization that works very hard to honor the musicians and writers who keep jazz alive. I was particularly impressed to hear about their new eyeJAZZ program, which hopes to put more visual technology in the hands of jazz writers, and thereby create better videos for all of us out there watching on YouTube and elsewhere. In keeping with this tech-savvy spirit, the 2011 JJA awards were not only live in new York, but were also streamed live on the internet and linked via webcast to satellite parties held in Berkeley, Boston, Chicago, Nashville, Portland, Seattle, Tallahassee and Washington, D.C.
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The JJA gives Awards for players of nearly every instrument in the jazz repertoire as well as to the journalists who cover them. The full list of winners, including Joe Lovano, Sonny Rollins, Blue Note Records, Mosaic Records and Ambrose Akinmusire can be found here, but I was particularly pleased to see that, among the many musicians honored, the late great Billy Bang received the award for Jazz Violinist of the year. His award was eloquently accepted by Kahil El’Zabar, a frequent collaborator.
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Writers honored included Nate Chinen, who won the Helen Oakley Dance – Robert Palmer Award for Feature and Review Writing, and Patrick Jarenwattananon, whose NPR jazz blog A Blog Supreme won Blog of the Year.
Not everyone could afford the tickets to a benefit like this, but if you’ve ever wondered whether such an event provides enough musical bang for the buck, this year I’d have to answer that question with a resounding “yes.” Emcee Josh Jackson, JJA President Howard Mandel, and their team made things flow so smoothly that I was able to forget what a logistical nightmare it must be to host this four hour event. Gregory Porter sang beautifully, and pianist Hilario Duran and soprano saxophonist Jane Bunnett played a good set with conga legend Candido. The Wallace Roney Septet made the end of the event swing as the revelers filtered out, despite the fact that Wallace Roney himself was stuck in traffic on the I-9, leaving his brother Antoine to step ably into his shoes and lead the group. But it was Randy Weston’s stint on stage that set the room ablaze for this listener. Opening with a version of “Little Niles” and “Hi-Fly” to honor his son Azzedin Weston and Benny Powell, his playing called the ancestors into the room. Weston was joined on “The Healers” by T.K. Blue, who borrowed a flute from Jane Bunnett, and by Candido, the nonagenarian percussionist who sounds decades younger. They closed their set with “Blue Moses,” and I can still feel the electricity two days later. That last song alone was worth the price of admission.
If you missed the benefit but want to support the JJA’s mission of “promoting informed discussion and reporting about jazz, educating a new generation of jazz journalists and exploring new media and new methods to create new audiences for this important form of cultural expression,” you can donate here.
