2021 JJA Jazz Awards Nominees Announced: 47 Categories of Jazz and Jazz Media Cite Music's Riches

Spotlighting the creative energy of the greater jazz community over a year of turmoil, the 2021 JJA Jazz Awards' Finalists Ballot, released today, cites some 300 musicians, writers, broadcasters, photographers, their recordings, books, live-streams, podcasts and platforms, as nominees for the Jazz Journalists Association's 25th annual Awards celebrating excellence. The complete slates of nominees in 47 categories of Jazz Recordings and Performance and Jazz Journalism are posted at the fully re-designed JJAJazzAwards website.

 

Saxophonists Charles Lloyd, Roscoe Mitchell and Pharoah Sanders and bassist Ron Carter are nominees for the JJA's Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Award. Composer-arranger-orchestra leader Maria Schneider has five nominations, including for Data Lords  as Album of the Year. Emerging leaders such as Nubya Garcia, Immanuel Wilkins, Thana Alexa, Sajë, multi-reedist Anna Weber and the band Artemis are among the nominees, along with established artists such as Bill Frisell, Carla Bley, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.

 

The JJA Jazz Awards is unique in recognizing jazz's media-makers. Nominated for Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism are:

Nate Chinen, WBGO director of editorial content, author

Paul de Barros, author, retired from Seattle Times

Marc Myers, author, Jazz Wax blog, The Wall Street 

Ben Ratliff, author, retired from The New York Times

Howard Reich, retired from the Chicago Tribune, author, films

Kevin Whitehead, critic on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, author of Book of the Year Award nominee Play The Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film.

 

Live-stream Producer of the Year, Jazz Podcast and Jazz Documentary are new media ballot categories. Awards for Vocal Group, Duo, Brass Specialist and Electronics Specialist of the Year are new, too. 

 

Professional members of the JJA, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit, international organization, submitted nominations, finalists being those accumulating the most. Committees pre-screened nominees for Book of the Year, Photo of the Year and Album Art of the Year awards. The JJA's professional members vote again to determine the 2021 Jazz Awards winners. 

"JJA members are proud to proclaim that despite the challenges of creating music, documenting and commenting on it during a pandemic, jazz people more than faced the challenges," said Howard Mandel, JJA president since 1994. "We've expanded our Awards categories because there's so much music and media being made about it, to consider." 

 

Winners of the 2021 JJA Jazz Award will be announced on or about May 5. Sponsors of the JJA's Awards and Jazz Heroes campaigns include the Joyce and George Wein Foundation, the Jazz Foundation of America, Braithwaite and Katz Communications, the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Carolyn McClair Public Relations, and Jazz Promo Services.

For more information about the JJA or the JJA's Jazz Awards, email Howard Mandel, President@JazzJournalists.org.

news.jazzjournalists.org

JJA Book Nominees Authors Zoom, Sunday, March 21 at 1 pm Central Daylight Time

JJA Book Nominees Authors Zoom

Sunday, March 21 at 1 pm

Central Daylight Time

Biographies of Dave Brubeck, Nat King Cole and Ornette Coleman, the autobiography of the late Phil Woods, a deep dive into jazz stories on film and a fictional trilogy about “jazz, intolerance, and baseball” have been nominated for the JJA’s 2021 Jazz Book of the Year Award. Authors of the six books will present their works and discuss their writing/publishing issues as moderated by Bob Blumenthal, JJA board member and Book Award committee chair, at the JJA Book Nominees Authors Zoom, Sunday, March 21 at 1 pm Central Daylight Time.

The authors and their books are:

Philip Clark, Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time (Hatchette)

Will Friedwald, Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole (Oxford University Press)

Maria Golia, Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure (Reaktion Books)

Mark Ruffin, Bebop Fairy Tales: A Historical Fiction Trilogy on Jazz, Intolerance and Baseball (Rough In Creative Works)

Kevin Whitehead, Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film (Oxford University Press)

Phil Woods with Ted Panken, Life in E Flat: The Autobiography of Phil Woods (Cymbal Press)

These books are being offered to JJA voting members for consideration toward the Jazz Award for Best Book of the Year About Jazz, presented annually since 1998. The 2021 Award winner will be announced on or about May 1. Recent winners are Jazz from Detroit by Mark Stryker (2020), Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon by Maxine Gordon (2019), Good Things Happen Slowly by Fred Hersch (2018), and Better Git It In Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus by Krin Gabbard (2017).

The JJA Book Nominees Authors Zoom on March 21 will be a 90 minute, interactive event open to JJA member registrants. It will be streamed live to the JJA Facebook page and archived on the JJA Youtube channel. It follows on the JJA's January 21 Zoom Book Party, wiith authors Karl Ackerman (A Map of Jazz: Crossroads of Music and Human Rights), Debbie Burke (Tasty Jazz Jams for Our Times), and Tish Oney (Peggy Lee: A Century of Song) as well as Panken (co-author of saxophonist Woods' book) and Sirius/XM jazz host/storyteller Ruffin. 

The JJA is a non-profit professional organization of writers, photographers, broadcasters, videographers, new media professionals and their supporters, which produces the 2021 JJA Jazz Awards. For further information on the Zoom Book Party, JJA Jazz Awards or the Jazz Journalists Association, contact Howard Mandel, President@JazzJournalists.org or Jim Eigo, Jim@JazzPromoServices.com.