NEA’s Jazz Masters Series Comes of Age
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

One of the more surprising recent developments in the jazz world is the increasing awareness of the National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Masters Awards. The program has existed since 1982, but until the last few years it seemed like only a few of us close observers had even heard of it.
However, since the appointment of Dana Gioia as Chairman of the NEA, the awards have ascended to a new level of prominence; now the announcements of the winners regularly make it to the front pages of newspapers, and they are the topic of much discussion and argument in the jazz community. (I can’t explain why Lee Konitz, one of the great living improvisers, still has not been honored.)
Every year, the recipients are announced in the fall, and the awards themselves are presented in a combination ceremony and celebratory concert that highlights the annual International Association of Jazz Educators conference. Today’s receptions will recognize the 2007 honorees: the bandleader Toshiko Akiyoshi, the trombonist Curtis Fuller, the pianist Ramsey Lewis, the vocalist Jimmy Scott, the flutist Frank Wess, the composer Phil Woods, and Dan Morgenstern, who will receive the A.B. Spellman award for advocacy.
Last year, there was more press coverage than I had ever witnessed at any jazz event, including all manner of paparazzi, TV news cameras, newspaper reporters, and other assorted scribblers who probably hadn’t heard of any of the winners beyond Tony Bennett. The NEA Awards have become jazz’s lifetime achievement awards, its equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize, and fill a muchneeded niche between posthumous honors — like the immortalizing of legend on a postage stamp — and the Grammies, which reward what’s hot right now rather than a long-term achievement.
In an interview yesterday with The New York Sun, Mr. Gioia, who was recently reconfirmed by the United States Senate for a second four-year term, explained that it was a deliberate decision on the part of the NEA to “invest in the award and make it into something that was comparable to the Academy Award, a powerful national honor that went to living jazz musicians.”
As Mr. Gioia elaborated, the announcement and presentation of the awards are merely the epicenter of Jazz Masters activity.
“We’ve tried to create this very powerful umbrella that allows things to happen,” he said. The NEA works with concert and festival producers all over the country, staging what amounts to an ongoing tour, bringing jazz to people in areas that have rarely gotten the chance to experience the great players in person.
“Let’s say you’re in Montana, and you’re trying to do a jazz festival,” Mr. Gioia said. “Well, now you can present an NEA Jazz Master in concert. That will give your festival at least one show that’s going to completely sell out, as well as bolster the attendance and the profile of the entire event.”
A further wing of the program is NEA Jazz in the Schools, which was developed in conjunction with Jazz at Lincoln Center.
“During Black History Month,” Mr. Gioia said, “every teacher wants to do something about the Afro-American experience, so we’ve created a one-week intro to jazz that consists of CDs, DVDs, posters, and an interactive Web site.”
He stressed that the lessons are laid out to help high school teachers, “who know they like jazz but perhaps don’t feel like they know enough to teach it,” and that they can be used in a variety of subjects. “We’ve set it up so that it can be done as part of a music class. If your school is lucky enough to have music, you could teach in history, social studies, civics, even geography, the materials are designed so that you can go down all these paths. You can talk about jazz and the civil rights movement, you can talk about the diaspora of jazz out of New Orleans.”
The NEA also works with Public Broadcasting on the TV show “Legends of Jazz,” hosted by Mr. Lewis, and on a series of daily oneand two-minute audio modules currently being aired on XM Radio but soon to be heard elsewhere as well.
“We can begin to see the impact we’re having on jazz, which is one of our major national initiatives,” Mr. Gioia said, looking back at his first term as NEA chairman. “This is also a test ground in a way. If we make intelligent, strategic investments in an art form, can we begin to change the economics of this art form for the better? I think we really help the infrastructure of jazz.”
The International Association of Jazz Educators annual conference continues through Saturday. Tonight, the 17th Annual NEA Jazz Masters Awards Concert will honor the 2007 NEA Jazz Masters in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel.