2021 Jazz Heroes

We’re lucky she’s done so, as Sue is a gifted photographer with an eye for the moment when a musician melds with the music. Her photographs often capture the spiritual/emotional essence of jazz, and a musician’s soul. Moreover, she offers her vision of the world feeling blessed to be able to share what she considers the gift of having witnessed and participated in such dramatic creativity and change in her hometown over four decades.

Sue grew up here during the Civil Rights Movement, attending a segregated elementary school and participating in the desegregation of Atlanta high schools. She was exposed to jazz by her parents, who played it consistently in their home; over the years, she has had the opportunity to photograph many of the fabled artists they introduced her to. Her more formal education in jazz – learning to distinguish instruments, players, rhythms and styles – was conducted by the late Stanley Crouch (2020 JJA Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism Award winner), who taught a jazz course as part of the Black Studies program offered at the Claremont Colleges in California. She attended Pomona College, Atlanta University and Stanford University.

During an era of enormous social and political change both locally and nationwide, Sue was fortunate to be able to meet and work with people in the progressive forefront. While a student she participated in the transition to power of such figures as Mayor Maynard Jackson and Congressman Andrew Young. After Young was elected Mayor she went to work in city government, staying for more than 36 years, through the administrations of all six (so far) of Atlanta’s African-American mayors.

Sue always had a camera with her, but never really considered herself a “photographer.” Photography was a passion that she engaged in as a participant-observer, documenting cultural events and activism. But when Mayor Andrew Young gave his staff cameras to use to document municipal advances during his tenure (1982-’90), she discovered it was a wonderful creative outlet as well as an escape from the stresses of her full-time, managerial day job.

And so she has served as the unofficial -- sometimes official -- city photographer for events such as the Atlanta Jazz festivals, the National Black Arts festivals, the 1996 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games, the visits of Nelson Mandela, programs at the Hammonds House Museum and those of civil rights organizations including the King Center, the Institute of the Black World, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), SCLC W.O.M.E.N. Inc., and some at the Atlanta University Center.

Sue is a founding member of Sistagraphy, the collective of African-American women photographers, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. She has exhibited widely; her photography appears in the books Reflections in Black: A History of African American Photographers, The Atlanta Jazz Festival: 40 Years, and MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Georgia, the Clark Atlanta University Galleries, Spelman College and prized by private collectors, too.

She has been recognized for her efforts -- for instance, she is depicted in Austin Blue’s “The Art of the S.W.A.T.S House” mural, unveiled by the Office of Cultural Affairs during the 2018 Elevate public arts festival in Southwest Atlanta. RollingOut.com gave Sue its Social Justice Award at the 2019 Sisters with Superpowers reception. The Arts Xchange named Sue an Arts & Justice Bridge Builder at the 2018 Ebon Dooley Awards. The Atlanta Business League honored her lifetime achievements by induction in the Women’s Hall of Fame at the 2019 Super Tuesday Women of Vision Breakfast.

We join the chorus! The JJA, with full endorsement of our Georgian members, is proud to hail Sue Ross as our 2021 Atlanta Jazz Hero.

It was 30 years ago that Wong founded a trendsetting record store An die Musik in Towson, the unincorporated settlement 15 miles from Baltimore. He not only established listening stations for any compact disc there but also experimented with selling CDs in less cumbersome, more environmentally friendly packaging than the plastic wrapped around "jewelboxes." In addition, he staged regular record signings, live performances and offered refreshments in his retail site.

Reacting to changes in the retail music industry, Henry moved his business to the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore in 1997, adding more live music presentations. The venue is an intimate listening room on the second floor of an historic Baltimore townhouse, located in the heart of the designated Cultural District. An die Musik Live has been voted one of the top 100 jazz venues in the world by DownBeat magazine.

Over the years, our Hero has had to innovate and re-engineer the business in response to the shifting economic and social challenges of the city of Baltimore. By always trying to operate as part of the fabric of the community -- and in service to musicians -- he’s been gratified that Baltimorians have rallied around his efforts to remain a vibrant part of the arts here.

Yet it is not the more than 4500 shows presented overall at An die Musik that make Henry Wong this year’s Jazz Hero. Rather, it’s his awareness very early in the pandemic last year of the coming hard times for live venues, especially small ones like his. Wong adapted his efforts to live streaming concerts by March 20, 2020, long before it had become the normal and almost only way to share live music. The 230 streamed shows he's hosted have provided work and some income for out-of-work musicians, as they were offered to viewers for a modest fee (allowing reviewing for five days post-gig) with the extra suggestion they include a “tip.”

During this time, Wong -- described by one faithful patron as “curmudgeonly but actually generous, a lover of fine wines who shies away from the spotlight, never getting on mic to announce bands or address audiences” -- has relied on friends, consulted tech industry leaders and recruited Peabody Institute sound engineering graduate students to create his concert model and continually improve it. Some students were even able to get classroom credits and real-world experience by working with him when their institutions were physically closed. Since that March 20 date, Wong’s An die Musik has featured countless Baltimore-centric musicians in its live-streams. Doing so, he has helped sustain the connections between artists as well as making them accessible to audiences far outside of the immediate Baltimore area. His vision and swift response to a true crisis is what makes Henry Wong so obviously the Baltimore Jazz Hero of 2021.

Josė, a native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, first arrived in Boston in 1972 to student teach as part of the undergraduate co-op program at Antioch College, then returned a year later as a bilingual teacher in the Boston Public Schools. An innovative instructor who “saw the media light,” he wrote grants to obtain videos and videotape equipment and used his extensive record collection in his classes. Students urged him to get his own radio show, which he did when Boston University’s radio station made new Afrocentric programming a priority. Con Salsa debuted on June 22, 1975 and through a series of programming changes, including a purge of all other music programs in 1998, survives as the highlight of Boston’s Saturday evening radio.

Beyond his extensive knowledge and superior taste, José is the ideal bilingual host. Each of his breaks is delivered in both English and Spanish, with a conversational tone and seamless flow that can serve as a model for broadcasters in any medium. He credits his fluency to spending part of his youth in Japan, where he learned both Japanese and English in an Armed Forces school, and to teachers who ensured that he would continue his English studies after his family returned to Puerto Rico.

In addition to the Afro-Latin connection that Con Salsa has provided jazz fans, Josė has also offered a bridge to jazz for his Spanish-speaking listeners. “Some people used to ask what Dizzy Gillespie’s music was doing on Con Salsa,” he explains, “but when I pointed out Dizzy’s connection to Mario Bauzá and Chano Pozo they started to understand. As more and more connections occur, like those of Barry Rogers and Brian Lynch to Eddie Palmieri, everyone begins to see that the crossover works both ways.” And many have followed José’s guidance to jazz gigs of legendary figures such as the late Ray Barretto and contemporary lions like Miguel Zenón.

As someone who has devoted his career in government and media to positive social change, José Massó serves as a bridge-builder among the diverse segments of Boston’s Spanish-speaking community. “It’s my Antioch background,” he notes, “and it comes with the turf of being a change agent who stresses collaboration. I always say that `We are a new people,’ and that does not just apply to Afro-Latinos.”

“Hothouse,” beyond being the title of Tadd Dameron’s bebop contrafact, quickly became a byword for the space that fostered a broad array of flourishing and established creative music. Having established the non-profit CIPEX (Center for the International Performance and Exhibition) with Jim deJong, JJA Jazz Hero of 2003, in ‘87 as a tribute to the late Chicago mayor Harold Washington, Marguerite merged its non-profit mission with her presentation/curation activities at the storefront HotHouse, her storefront space, and first officially put forth the HotHouse banner with “The Women of the New Jazz Festival” of 1991.

Supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Horberg upgraded the venue in 1995, moving to a South Loop locale. The generous new resources afforded residencies to such locals as saxophonist Edward Wilkerson’s Eight Bold Souls and pianist Yoko Noge’s Jazz Me Blues, featured emerging talents Dee Alexander and Nicole Mitchell; AACM originators Henry Threadgill, Fred Anderson and Roscoe Mitchell; New York-based players like David Murray, Jerry Gonzalez, Dewey Redman and Susie Ibarra, plus international innovators such as Amsterdam’s Instant Composers Pool and Willem Breuker Kollektief, South Africa’s Hugh Masekela, Poland’s Tomasz Stanko - a list vast and various.

Besides being a haven for local, national and global improvised music and jazz-related sounds, HotHouse was home-from-home for photographers, journalists, artists, fashionistas, members of the LGBTQ community and those might struggle to express themselves and/or find an outlet for engagement. Horberg hosted gallery exhibitions, forums for discussion and debate, fundraisers, spoken word nights and educational outreach programs. This inclusive attitude squared with her outspoken personality and heroic socialist politics.

Challenges and adversity never rocked Horberg from her commitment to backing uncommercial projects and activating communities’ efforts. In 2003, during a rare residency from Cuba’s Orquesta Aragón, Hothouse was shuttered by authorities for several weeks. Three years and many hassles later, Marguerite was unceremoniously unseated from her position as executive director -- after which, without her founding leadership, as anticipated, the venue fell apart.

Undaunted, she formed another non-for-profit, Partisan Arts International, brainstorming with concerted thinkers about urban cultural initiatives and multi-platform arts development, and launched Portoluz, presenting jazz and improvisation on disparate stages, including the Lakeside Inn in Michigan. Eventually regaining the imprimatur of HotHouse, Horberg has continued to promote and proselytize, proving notably resilient during 2020, when she inaugurated an ambitious livestream platform, webcasting via HotHouseGlobal@Twitch.tv.

Conceived as a cooperatively-operated network and an open forum for cross-cultural, artist-driven productions, HotHouseGlobal in past months has collaborated on production and distribution of epic videofests juxtaposing musicians of Chicago and Havana (Marguerite runs the ongoing Chicago Guantanamo Blues Exchange, a program greenlit when President Barack Obama opened relations in 2016, and spurred the successful campaign to get Chicago’s City Council to call for an end of the U.S embargo on Cuba), Women’s Heritage Month showcases for women composers, and most recently Culturas 360, with performers from faraway lands (Chennai, Chile, Galicia, Mozambique, Reunion Island, Tuva, Zanzibar, etc.).

As tough as she can be sweet, Marguerite Horberg’s steadfast espousal through the decades of disenfranchised and marginal musics from around the world and her native midwest -- peppered with acceptance of populist forms that draw people together -- through relentless presenting, curating, consulting, organizing, lobbying, grant-writing, ideating, hospitality and generally whipping people out of half-ass complacency, indubitably qualifies her as a JJA Jazz Hero, with bells on.

Half a century later, his base of operations remains the same house, now his own, in a Motor City that has been enriched immeasurably by what he has wrought here. Just as the musical camaraderie and mentorship of the likes of pianist Barry Harris and hometown heroes such as Choker Campbell shaped the young Harrison and equipped him to pack his tenor saxophone case for New York, Wendell has been one of Detroit’s contemporary prime shapers of the scene, a significant cultivator of talent.

The concept of self-determination -- particularly but not exclusively Black self-determination -- was in the musical as well as the socio-political air when Harrison returned here, as the Civil Rights movement morphed into the Black Power movement. In New York, that had given rise to, for instance, the 1964 October Revolution in Jazz and even earlier Charles Mingus’ and Max Roach’s Debut Records; in Chicago, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians; in St. Louis, the Black Arts Group. The prime manifestation of this concept in Detroit was Tribe, co-founded by Harrison and trombonist Phil Ranelin.

Tribe was an umbrella for concert promotion and for a handful of small-pressing records by Ranelin and Harrison, trumpeter Marcus Belgrave and pianist Harold McKinney, among others, that have gone on to become underground classics, prized and reissued today. For a number of years, Tribe also spun off an eponymous Afrocentric magazine covering music and culture, of course, but the broader social and political issues of the time as well.

And though Tribe dissolved before the ‘70s end, its ethos lived on. For Harrison, the RebirthJazz Inc. educational-cultural organization and WenHa Records would be his next vehicles for self-determination, both partnerships with his wife and musical collaborator Pamela Wise.

Subsequently Harrison has led and joined a protean succession of groups, often involving cross-generational assemblages of musicians, bringing the youngest voices into the realm of elders like himself. Musically, he’s paid tribute to his Sun Ra tutelage in solo saxophone cuts, hailed the Ellington legacy with a clarinet choir, toured Africa and the Middle East with Motor City peers as the Michigan Jazz Masters, recorded stunning duets with McKinney, joined with Ranelin to front the Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra in Los Angeles, and reunited Tribe in Paris. In the late 1990s and early 2000s he presented grant-supported concerts on Detroit’s public radio station WDET, providing a platform for Detroiters and expats like Sheila Landis, Naima Shamborguer, Alex Harding, J.D. Allen and Geri Allen.

“I have always worked hard,” Harrison said in 2018 when he was recognized with a Kresge Eminent Award, arguably Detroit’s most prestigious arts recognition, carrying with it a $50,000 purse (the Kresge Foundation’s monograph on Harrison’s life and works is available for download, and hard copies can be requested at no cost). “I would see others get opportunities and awards other than me, but I tried to stay positive, and rather than wait for somebody else to do things for me, I did them myself. I haven’t made much money, but I’ve been able to control what I’ve done. I’m like a long-distance runner who has been running a course of my life.”

Lest there be any doubts about whether he’s still running, his latest Tribe: Get Up Off Your Knees (WenHa) has it all: an update of Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” bacon-fat funk, mysterioso post-bop, balladry, straight-up swinging, gently swaying West African-themed pieces … you get the picture. The late Harold McKinney, one of Harrison’s co-conspirators in Tribe and many later projects, may have put it best: “The sun never sets on the Wendellian horizon.”

Going into the pandemic year, Indianapolis-based saxophonist Rob Dixon was enjoying the varied routine of a successful jazz musician, teaching courses at IUPUI (our urban research center, offering degrees from both Indiana and Purdue universities) and area high schools, playing with his band Triology at the Chatterbox and Mousetrap, making frequent recording sessions as a sought-after sideman.

An Indianapolis Jazz Hall of Fame inductee, Dixon was booking other musicians as well as contributing insights and influence on the local scene from his purview as Artistic Director of Indy Jazz Fest, Naptown’s most culturally significant jazz occasion.

Then the Hoosier State entered a lockdown, venues shuttered, schools closed and cases of illness climbed. Dixon describes his emotions: “Uncertainty, sadness...hopeful.”

But Dixon, who is known as the “Musical Mayor of Naptown,” says he found renewed purpose within the jazz community: “Try to raise money for professional musicians who were out of work.” This led to an exciting project by Indy Jazz Fest to commission original works despite the challenges.

Dixon explained, “Though we are not able to operate as normal in this Covid-19 environment, the Indianapolis Jazz Foundation remains unwavering in its commitment to keep our Indianapolis jazz musicians creating. We have commissioned three accomplished Indy-based musicians to write, perform, and video (for virtual viewing) original music that reflects the subject matter of these uncertain and difficult times. We are confident that we will enable these musicians and their bands to create and express through the medium of jazz, profound artistic statements, that will have a lasting and impactful effect on Indianapolis and the world."

These works, available for viewing online at IndyJazzFest.net and via the organizations’ Facebook Live and YouTube platforms, were:

• “Legalize Being Black” -- Native Sun, a hip-hop trio featuring Richard Floyd (drums) Brandon Meeks (bass) and Bobby Young (MC) presented a hip-hop/jazz suite addressing the Black Lives Matter movement and the worldwide recent protests of police brutality sparked by the killing of George Floyd.
• “Vonnegut” -- Guitarist Charlie Ballantine and his 12-tet (with Rob Dixon on reeds) performed original compositions inspired by the works of celebrated Indianapolis- writer, in partnership with the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
• “38th and Post Modernism” — Jared Thompson & Premium Blend (expanded to an octet) concertized with an original suite that delved into the complex narrative of systemic racism as it pertains to the Black communities in Indianapolis today.

Additionally, Dixon partnered with David Allee on the Indy Musicians Relief Fund to assist local jazz and related genre musicians who have had a direct loss of income through cancelled or rescheduled performances.

In 2021, Dixon wants to continue as an instrumentalist/bandleader/teacher and mentor to young aspiring musicians, “working on new music, always!” As he told Indianapolis journalist Tom Alvarez, the upside of the quarantine is it’s given him time to compose, and also, evidently, to reflect.

“This period has reminded me why I got involved with music,” Rob says. “When it’s taken away from you, it reveals itself how much you love what you do. The connection with other musicians and audience members, the energy that happens when musicians get together and play for an audience. ...You’re just communicating at a very high level.”

He misses that, but has filled the void with good works, which he tends to downplay. “I have no advice,” he modestly claims. “Just do what’s in your heart and be who you want to be. My high point is living every day is being able to play music for a living.” So it goes, naturally, for Rob Dixon, Indianapolis’ Jazz Hero.

In those capacities, Dunn has booked thousands of bands of musical genres ranging across jazz, blues, country, rock, classical and soul/r&b, including such greats as Ray Charles, Angie Stone and Marilyn Maye. In addition, he has helped rising artists like Blue Note artist Logan Richardson, Dennis Winslett and multi- platinum-selling producer Ronnie ‘Lil Ronnie’ Jackson develop in their early years. Since 1998, he has hosted KKFI’s popular radio show Jazz in the Afternoon, and he has curated the talent for the Rhythm and Ribs Jazz Festival, Jammin’ at the Gem Jazz Series, Charlie Parker symposiums, Women in Jazz concert series, and the Kansas City Power and Light Arts Festival. In addition, his band the Jazz Disciples regularly performs in Kansas City and tours the U.S.

But quietly, without need of recognition, out of personal passion, Gerald Dunn has devoted himself to staying in touch with the aging and ailing musicians he has worked with in the past. From shoveling snow to delivering meals and arranging taxi rides to the doctor, he has been a dutiful friend to the elderly jazz statesmen and women whose lights are dimming. An award-winning BBQ chef, for more than two decades he has held an annual holiday feast of gratitude for these senior artists, in partnership with Truman Medical Center. What started out as a hearty meal has expanded to medical screenings, with entertainment and featured speakers, hosted at the American Jazz Museum. Dunn also works with organizations such as the Coda Jazz Fund, administered by the Greater Kansas City Communication Foundation, which covers funeral home, crematorium or grave site costs of deceased career jazz musicians.

Balancing that, he devotes considerable time to young talent, being active in our schools, always in search of a talented artist who needs guidance, attention and maybe a used bass. He sponsors artist appreciation and development programs for strivers, advocates for more music and arts education for young people and, indeed, promotes arts education for all ages because he knows that art is the soul of our people. He does all he can to nourish the soul of Kansas City.

Born and raised in Texas, Dunn studied music performance at Stephen F. Austin College in Texas and the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He came under the tutelage of two great Texas tenors, Arnett Cobb and Illinois Jacquet. Since arriving here, he’s been mentored by some of Kansas City’s most historically significant musicians, including Jay McShann, Ahmed Alaadeen, Carol Comer, Queen Bey, Eddie Saunders and Professor Bobby Watson.

Aside from his love of slow-smoking meat, slapping bones and talking trash, Gerald Dunn is addicted to applause. Says he, “Of all the sounds I hear in the Blue Room -- and I have heard some of the most exciting sounds ever heard there -- the sound I most crave is the sound of uncontrolled clapping and cheering, like an eruption of ecstasy.” The JJA hopes the Kansas City Jazz Hero knows we are beside ourselves with joy, cheering him on.

As a singer, Trible disproves the snooty, negative stereotype sometimes expressed by jazz instrumentalists by combining vocal virtuosity with solid musicianship and improvisational skills that delight audiences and his musical collaborators alike -- hear his lead vocals on Kamasi Washington’s 2015 breakthrough The Epic (just one example) for proof. There seems to be a renaissance occurring lately of L.A. jazz, in which Leimert Park and The World Stage, thanks in large part to Trible's attentions, play a major role.

An educational and performance art space in Leimert Park Village, the center of Los Angeles’ African-American cultural community, The World Stage was founded in 1989 by the late master drummer Billy Higgins and poet and community arts activist Kamau Daáood (2006 JJA A-Team member) in an attempt to fill a void and respond to a social need. Initially a loose collective of artists and arts supporters, The World Stage has grown to assume a pioneering, pivotal role in South Los Angeles’s music-and-artscape. And Trible, who started attending events at the space as soon as it opened, is hands-on there.

As he told the LA Weekly for a profile of December 2019, “I’m the executive director and janitor and the art director and MC, the on-call performer. I do the booking. You might see me sweeping the alley or cleaning the toilet. Or onstage.” Since the pandemic shut down live performances across California, Trible has collaborated with Leroy Downs of KCRW to present a virtual concert series under the rubric Jazz Musicians UNITE Against Racism and stretched at The Stage to put on online concerts such as last June’s Elegy for Fallen Soldiers, March 2021’s Womens’ Her-story Month Concert Series, and six shows in April (Jazz Appreciation Month) ‘21, leading off with guitarist Tom Conley’s quintet MAST offering “Battle Hymns of the Republic.”

The vocalist himself most often performs with his own Dwight Trible Ensemble, in Pharaoh Sanders’ quartet, and as vocal director of the Horace Tapscott Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra; he has a major role in my film The Gathering: Roots & Branches of Los Angeles Jazz. In 2005, when the Jazz Journalists Association convened in Los Angeles for the first National Critics Conference and he performed for them amid an all-star production at Jazz Bakery, Trible -- then little known outside the city he came to from hometown Cincinnati in 1976, made an indelible impression. Since then he’s racked up innumerable credits with uncategorizable others, from Oscar Brown, Jr. to Della Reese, Billy Childs, Patrice Rushen and John Beasley to ex-Epic Records chairman Antonio Marquis “L.A.” Reid and singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist DeWayne Juliuis “DJ” Rogers. His style has been likened to that of Andy Bey and Leon Thomas, but in truth, no one sings like Dwight Trible, whose sweepingly rich, warm and freely unfurling voice bespeaks humanitarian fundamentals.

"These are the three things that shaped me,” he has said. “One, treat everyone with the utmost respect, no matter what their station in life. People will support you. Two, give freely of yourself, your time and energy, without expecting anything in return. Blessings will show up in ways you never dreamed of. Three, do what you can where you are to bring people together, create a better
understanding about each other and make the world a better place.” Spoken and sung by a true Jazz Hero.

Bither came to the Walker from the Flynn Theatre for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont, where he was director of programming and artistic director of the jazz festival. Before then, he spent six and a half years at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) as associate director and music curator of the Next Wave Festival, commissioning new work from Cecil Taylor, Henry Threadgill and the World Saxophone Quartet.

Warm, curious, kind, open-minded, sincere in his love for the arts and his belief that they matter, vastly knowledgeable yet genuinely humble, Philip is someone you can trust to lead you somewhere new. At the Walker, Minneapolis’s multidisciplinary arts center, he’s made jazz an integral part of his adventuresome annual performing arts season, which spans several months and also includes dance, theater, other forms of music and performance art.

This might not be jazz that audiences know or have heard on the radio, but it will be jazz he really, really wants them to know about. His enthusiasm for what he’s discovered and wants to share is catching. He considers jazz “a music that is fluid and mobile. … It’s a music that continues to morph and become more global and more connected to contemporary musical aesthetics.”

When Bither arrived at the Walker, it already had a rich history of presenting jazz, starting as far back as the 1960s. During his first year, he brought in the Sun Ra Arkestra (for “Sun Ra Plays Disney”), clarinetist Don Byron, Butch Morris leading IMP ORK (a local improvisational orchestra) in one of his Conductions, and the Hamiett Bluiett/D.D. Jackson/Mor Thiam Trio. Ever since, his programming has featured remarkable performances, significant commissions (more than 35 so far, most large-scale and/or interdisciplinary), immersive celebrations and rare opportunities for both artists and audiences.

Artists have the chance to perform in one of the nation’s most influential and closely watched performing arts programs. Audiences have the chance to see, hear and experience some of today’s most vital and forward-thinking artists – and to hang out with them after the show in the Walker’s bar. Small wonder the line to get into the McGuire Theater, designed and built under Bither’s watchful eye, sometimes winds through the lobby and down one or even two flights of stairs.

Bither concisely explained his curatorial choices: “A lot of it is based on passion. The rest of it is based on balance, questions of logistics, questions of what is relevant now, what’s needed now in our field.” His passion for music on the leading edge shows in his programming. Among the many artists featured to date, some multiple times, are George Lewis, Jason Moran, Steve Lehman, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Craig Taborn, Robert Glasper, Amir ElSaffar, Wadada Leo Smith, Kamasi Washington, Mary Halvorson and Makaya McCraven.

His jazz festivals are legendary: three days of Ornette Coleman’s music; two days for Minneapolis drummer Dave King; two days of Vijay Iyer; a full day of John Zorn; two days for Threadgill, including a set by 24 Minnesota musicians performing his compositions from the past 40 years.

Bither has a special passion for what Lewis calls “American experimental music,” notably including that of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). In 2015, Jack DeJohnette’s “Made in Chicago” project, a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the AACM, was a gathering of forward-facing jazz giants: Muhal Richard Abrams, Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Larry Gray.

Philip Bither’s lifelong embrace of this music, his support of jazz masters and young artists who catch his discerning ear, and his efforts to bring it to the general public in a respectful and elegant way have enriched audiences in Minneapolis-St. Paul, making him a Jazz Hero completely worthy of the honor.

Growing up in Helena surrounded by music, Williams asked for piano lessons as a preschooler. It wasn’t a great fit, but by fifth grade she had found her instrument. As a young teen MJ was sitting in with her father and, by the age of 16, gigging in local clubs. She developed her talents; as a reviewer for Earshot Jazz (Seattle) wrote, “Williams' voice and delivery exemplify that essential but rare quality in jazz singing: a sense of knowing exactly what the songs are about."

After high school, she lit out for San Francisco to study art and play music; returning home in the ‘70s, she discovered the town of Basin, pop. 250, and a few friends bought land then over time, the local bank building and the Masonic Hall, renovating them as studios for visual and musical artists. So began the Montana Artists Refuge, which in 1993 began to offer residencies. Williams and her partners at the Refuge hosted some 300 international artists, produced performances, instituted an annual Indian Artists Residency Program and eventually the Indian Artists Symposium during their 18 year run.

“Music to me is such a great model for community,” Williams has said, “because it involves so many voices and each voice has a place.”

In 1986 she had received a Montana Arts Council fellowship grant to spend three months in New York City, where she audited classes with Sheila Jordan at City College and immersed herself in the jazz life. She then moved to Seattle, where she attended Cornish College of the Arts, studying with Jay Clayton and Julian Priester. She began recording in 1987 with the standards album By All Means, continuing with Trance Atlantic (2010) documenting her Paris Project, and most recently It’s About The Song (2014) with her trio. Her forays away as a performer have included appearances at a Women in Jazz concert at NYC’s Universal Jazz Coalition, the National Women’s Music Festival, Seattle’s Bumbershoot and Bellevue Festivals.

In a letter nominating Williams for the 2016 Montana Governor’s Arts Award, which she received, bassist Kelly Roberti wrote that she “not only bolstered a community in an original way but reminded artists to stay the course constantly,” and in addition “restored a beautiful Montana town that was on its knees for lack of renewal and change.”

“Iconoclastic,” “persevering,” “an amazing player,” “profound and humble,” are words other musicians summon when discussing MJ Williams. Pianist Ann Tappan, who has collaborated with her for more than 30 years in the trio Threeform, said, “Lyrics didn’t resonate with me until I did them with MJ. She’s the real deal – she is in the music, and unexpected things will happen if the band will create the space for her. She’s very spontaneous.”

Adam Greenberg, drummer and a founder of the Montana Jazz Collective, spoke of Williams’ awesome phrasing, her encouragement of younger players, and the challenging logistics of playing jazz in their sparsely populated state, due to the distances involved.

Williams acknowledges the challenge, but doesn’t feel unconnected. “Our interaction [with talented musicians] is what really keeps it alive for me. It would be a big struggle if there weren’t dedicated people here. Just being located in Montana requires a whole different way of looking at the music. It’s pretty isolated here for jazz musicians.”

Having become friends with modernist painter Robert Deweese, who she refers to as her “art dad,” Williams adopted his belief that the market doesn’t matter – process in the studio does. She is disciplined, taking her practice and rehearsal time seriously as she continues to explore the worlds of improvisation and original music. Her objective is to remain as open as possible to new ideas and creative practices.

To put your art first, directing it towards making a difference in such wide open spaces, is to take a daring stance. “MJ is a Montana legend,” asserted pianist, composer and Montana State University music professor Eric Funk. “Her artistry is nothing short of stunning. A true improviser, eloquent, versatile and always new and honest, she’s a musician any real professional wants to perform or record with.” Those in the know under the Big Sky agree: MJ Williams is a Jazz Hero.

In more than 40 years helping run things at the quintessential cultural gathering known as New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival -- a magical city built from scratch every year in and around the mile-long Fairgrounds racetrack -- she’s pulled together crews that created the conditions to showcase and support the incredible array of local and visiting musicians, crafts folks and cuisine creators in an environment that’s safe, navigable, delicious and delectable to all the senses. And aside from a possible first infection with the Jazz Bug incurred by sitting next to Duke Ellington on a piano bench when she was 12  -- ”I still have that (autographed) photo on my wall!” -- she was inoculated right there, in 1976.

She’d been exploring, experiencing, everything! on a peripatetic path when she got to New Orleans. Having earned a nursing degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, she’d alternated work and travel in Japan, South America, Europe and the US.  She’d studied folklore, too; loved the arts and  crafts, dance, film and theater. When an accident limited her nursing, she began turning fabric remnants into eccentric neckties – resulting in Quint Davis, producer of the then-fledgling NOJHF who purchased an unsewn tie from her cart at the French Market giving her alternatives for an unpronounceable surname. When Nurse Nancy, aka “Necktie,” delivered the item, she marveled at a photo of the Big Chief of the Wild Magnolias in full regalia on Davis’s wall.

“What’s that?” she said. Davis invited her to an Indian practice at the H&R Bar and she showed up, as she says, ”this little blonde in a Michigan van, tootling down to Second and Dryades.” The chanting of Big Chief Bo Dollis of the Wild Magnolias captivated her.  “It was somehow very familiar…  like I’d been there before.”    

That deep resonance with New Orleans culture has guided her ever since.  She volunteered answering Jazz Fest phones in 1976, and, due to her natural skills as an organizer and determination to learn all details of event production, quickly was promoted to Fair Director, in charge of the budgeting and logistical aspects, Fairgrounds construction thru cleanup. 

She’d had no experience, but “just figured it out!” according to Callie Dean, a long time friend. Necktie Nancy simply says, “It’s in my heart . . I grew with it.”

 She was Associate Producer of the Heritage Fair when she retired in 2005. With the expertise she’d developed at Jazzfest, Nancy also assisted George Wein’s organization with productions including European tours, the Newport Jazz  and Folk Festivals, Saratoga Jazz Festival and President Bill Clinton’s inaugurations. She garnered recognition along the way; the Mayor of New Orleans and City Council named her a New Orleans Legend in 2017.

Post-pandemic, we see Nancy leading, following and in the middle of second line parades, dancing and hugging her favorite musicians, helping to sew, decorate, celebrate, give solace, share grief at the celebratory funerals of local cultural icons, making connections and contributing in her inimitable way to the great gumbo that is New Orleans jazz.

She is President of Gail W. Boyd, P.C., an entertainment law firm, and Gail Boyd Artist Management. Originally from Chicago, she is a graduate of DePaul University and its School of Law, and has been involved in entertainment law since 1976, specializing in music and specifically jazz since 1979. While undoubtedly a leader in her field, it is Boyd’s dedication to the music and her innovative mind, as demonstrated in part by her industry-supporting response to the Covid-19 pandemic, that the JJA celebrates with this Award.

In 2017, Gail formed her new Facebook group “Alternative Venues for Jazz” to provide a virtual space for musicians to share information about performance venues, particularly outside of the better-known jazz clubs and festivals. When Covid-19 hit, she converted the page to a virtual meeting platform for musicians and industry professionals to share information on how they’ve adapted to the previously unimagined conditions required as health precautions. The page now boasts more than 6,200 members.

As a lawyer, Gail has represented artists including Betty Carter, Tommy Flanagan, Randy Weston (now as Executor of his estate), Dorthaan Kirk (as Executor of the Rahsaan Roland Kirk estate), record executive Steve Backer, and several record labels. Gail Boyd Artist Management’s current clients are John Clayton, Brianna Thomas, Don Braden, The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, Scott Tixier, Richie Goods, Lakecia Benjamin, Michael Olatuja and dancer/choreographer Jade Solomon Curtis.

She’s always extending her reach. She has served as production coordinator for more than 20 recordings and for a Quincy Jones concert in Central Park; she also co-produced a gospel album with Brian Bacchus for the choir of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Brooklyn, NY.  In 2010, Danilo and Patricia Perez named Boyd the International Coordinator of the Panama Jazz Festival, where she served for four years.

Gail presently sits on the Boards of the Pan African Center for Empowerment, the Martin Luther King/Coretta Scott King Memorial and the North American Performing Arts Managers and Agents (NAPAMA), where she continues as president for a second term, having been first elected in October 2019. She is the former Vice Chair of the Entertainment, Sports, and Art Law Committee of the National Bar Association and chaired the same committee for the Metropolitan Black Bar Association; she was a member of the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Entertainment Law.

She has been elected to the Board of the International Society of Jazz Composers and Arrangers. She is a former board member of the non-profit International Women in Jazz, WBGO Jazz 88.3 FM and the Noel Pointer Foundation.  For nearly 20 years, she was Chair of the Board of Brooklyn Legal Services.

Are there really enough hours in the day for this Jazz Hero? Maybe not, but there’s one thing, I know – Gail Boyd doesn’t stop until she gets it all done.

For instance, the F. Norman Vickers Artist in Residence Fund, established in 2013 to bring jazz musicians and educators to Pensacola for high school and college workshops, instruction, performances and related community enrichment was named in his honor, of course. And he’s an active jazz journalist -- a founding member of the JJA, in fact, -- who at age 90 continues to blog, write articles for the Jazz Pensacola newsletter, contribute to the Dixieland Jazz Mailing List and contributing writings like this recent memory of meeting Slim Gaillard to the publication The Syncopated Times.

Vickers’ parents sold cabbage and tomato plants to seed-and-feed stores and canning companies, out of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. His mother was a classical pianist, so her son took piano lessons. When he was ten, someone gave him a plastic chromatic harmonica, and in sixth grade, he was introduced to the tonette, a flute-like instrument popular in elementary music education back then, which in turn, led to his being chosen to learn the piccolo by the school bandleader. Listening to the Leon Kelner Orchestra from the Blue Room of the Hotel Roosevelt in New Orleans via clear-channel radio was Norman Vickers’ early exposure to jazz.

Norman added the guitar to his musical repertoire while attending college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas as a pre-med student, followed by medical school at Emory University in Atlanta and internship in internal medicine at New England Medical Center Hospital in Boston, where he met his future wife Betty. After two years in the Navy, mostly at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago, he had his residency at the Charity Hospital in New Orleans, which he and Betty explored in depth. He became a gastroenterologist at the University of Louisville and member of the UofL School of Medicine faculty. In 1965 the Vickers moved to Pensacola, Florida where Norman established his solo practice, among the first full-time GI doctors in the city. He used his harmonica to engage patients drifting into sedation so he could perform colonoscopies. In the 1970s he would join the MOPS -- Musicians of the Past, World War II veterans who met monthly to jam -- miking and amplifying his chromatic harmonica.

In the early 1980s, jazz societies emerged throughout the nation.When the American Federation of Jazz Societies first met in Savannah, Georgia in 1984, Vickers was elected to the founding Board. He later served as newsletter editor, Vice President and, in 1991, President. During this same time, the Arts Council of Northwest Florida, radio station WUWF and the newly-formed non-profit Jazz Society of Pensacola (with Norman as a director) made the decision to start the Pensacola JazzFest.

The neophyte organization was run out of Vickers’ medical office for a number of years, his receptionist on occasion asking “Is this call medical or musical?” From 1984 to 2004, Norman served as Jazz Pensacola’s volunteer executive director. He has since attained “emeritus” status.
Another source of his pride is the Jazz Room at the West Florida Public Library in downtown Pensacola. What he started in the early 1980s as a casual collection of recordings and books now has its own designated space housing an inventory valued at over $20,000, most available for check-out.

Nominally retired, Dr. Vickers, besides his jazz activities, raises award-winning camellias. Reflecting on his long career, he observes, “Jazz continues to play a major role in my life. Music was a complete diversion as a mind-expanding release from a demanding medical practice. It opened up a whole new vista for me and provided an opportunity to make many new friends all over the world. It has helped keep me sane when the nightly TV news might do otherwise.” Jazz Hero Norman Vickers also brings empathy, sensitivity, serve and sanity to jazz.

Tacuma, who in high school had loved to go the Uptown Theater to see the touring R&B stars like James Brown, Motown artists and the Philly Sound as well as Latin dance band music, went on to perform with the wide-ranging likes of explorers, avant-gardists and abstractionists John Zorn, Derek Bailey, Nels Cline and the Sun Ra Arkestra as well as popsters/rockers The Roots, Ray Parker Jr., Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana and Nona Hendryx, Australian children's band The Wiggles, and to appear on Saturday Night Live, the Late Show with David Letterman and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Yet all the while Philadelphia has been his home, where he formed his own record company Jam All Productions, started an appointment-only style salon The Redd Carpet Room, with his wife raised a large family, produced festivals and concerts, offered unstinting help to local musicians and groups and developed master classes such as “Music and the Human Experience” to share the information he’s gathered during a period in which the music business has undergone radical changes.

In 2015 Jamaaladeen conceived and produced the Outsiders Improvised & Creative Music Festival, which has become an annual schedule bringing to Philadelphia an extraordinary array of musicians who would not likely be seen here otherwise, while also highlighting a circle of comparably adventurous hometown players. When live performances became impossible in 2020, he turned the sixth Outsiders Fest into a online video series called the “Clean Sweep Sessions,” as he described them, “continuing [the Fest’s] mission of showcasing diverse styles of risk-taking, progressive music and groundbreaking artists during the Covid 19 Pandemic.”

He has always been a busy man, and now in his sixth decade has accelerated his activities just when most everything else has slowed to a crawl. Some highlights: he produced and scored much of the The Last Poets’ prophetic 2019 recording Transcending Toxic Times; organized The Inauguration Wrecking Ball, a 2017 gathering of musicians, poets and speakers here where democracy was born to offer “inspiration towards peaceful positive action in the face of anxiety, fear and frustration,” and most recently created a musical “Tribute to the Philly Rhythm Kings,“ the unsung rhythm section behind the 1960s’-’70s’ Philadelphia Sound of soul music.

It should be noted that Tacuma is a person of faith, having converted to Islam after having worked with Ornette Coleman for six months in Paris. Unsure at that time if he could reconcile conflicts he perceived between very strict Muslim observance and music, he quit music for a year, returning to it only after Coleman visited the bassist at his mosque and urged him to use his God-given gift to to spread peace and love, and provide for his family -- that music could be a source of good. Ever since, Jamaaladeen has made sure his creative messages are positive, in line with his core values. He views Islam as a way of life more so than a religion, a path that’s brought him closer to the creator of all things -- Allah.

He further believes that a balance of spiritual life and music business has helped sustain him as a working musician, kept him focused on family and community, and fueled his creativity. He pays back: in the late 1970s performing for events, celebrations and fundraisers at the first Islamic Community Center of Philadelphia (first accredited Islamic school here), and with Khadijah Alderman’s Funeral Home, the first Islamic burial service in the city. In 2020 he also produced a first-ever “Virtual Eid Celebration Concert,” a two-hour event for the mosque Masjidullah, helping Philadelphian Muslims adapt and connect during the lockdown on gatherings.

Jamaaladeen has garnered many citations, including the Hungarian Parallel Culture Award, the Marcus Garvey Foundation 50th Anniversary Award, The Pew Fellowship in the Arts, The Uptown Theater Hall of Fame Award and Gerald Veasely's Bass Boot Camp "Living the Dream” Award. He’s had residency fellowships at The MacDowell Colon, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Civitella Ranieri. Unlike many prophets, he’s been honored by his hometown: In 2017 and 2018 he was awarded The Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz Best Bassist Award, and in 2018 he received the City of Philadelphia's Benny Golson Award, which comprises the Liberty Bell Award -- one of the highest honors from the City. On receiving the Golson, Tacuma said, with characteristic generosity, “I feel it’s not only an award for myself, but also everybody who ever went into a studio with me, or a concert, or had anything to do with my success.”

The JJA is pleased to recognize Jamaaladeen Tacuma as a powerful, positive presence in the arts, the 2021 Philadelphia Jazz Hero.

These livestream events have offered Portland-area musicians an audience at a time when such opportunities are few, from Heavywood Studio in Lake Oswego, just south of Portland, a 3000 square foot space where they can be isolated in separate booths and still play together. Among those who’ve webcast from the studio are drummers Mel Brown, Gary Hobbs, Allen Jones and Tyrone Hendrix; bassists David Friesen, Tom Wakeling and John Lakey; guitarists Dan Balmer, Dan Fahnle and John Stowell; vocalist Rebecca Kilgore; saxophonist Joe Manis and trumpeter Charlie Porter. Randy (not kin to Charlie) often joins them, on the studio’s vaunted Steinway Concert grand.

”I like the surprises,” Randy says of sitting in, “things that happen that you can’t control, the mystery and the unknown … When something honest or sincere really grabs me, things that transcend preparation. That can happen with a lot of different styles of music. I like that random quality, that serendipity.”

Having grown up in San Diego, son of an Anglo father and Hispanic mother, Porter has been a key member of the local jazz scene since arriving here and establishing Heavywood 30 years ago. He has gained a reputation as a musician’s musician, a knowledgeable, inventive and sophisticated player with a remarkable sense of time and gorgeous keyboard facility, allowing him to weave tricky meters and clever cross-rhythms into spirited, organically whole, beautiful music.

A cheerful guy who takes music seriously and enjoys making bandmates sound good, Randy's been a successful producer, in 2015 being behind the board for Lori Henriques’ How Great Can This Day Be, nominated for a Grammy in the Children’s Music category. He’s honored other locals with two important albums: Porter Plays Frishberg Unsung (2020) a tribute to the acclaimed songwriter, singer, pianist and Portland resident (Dave Frishberg is, unfortunately, now unable to perform), and Grammy-nominated Porter Plays Porter (2018) -- that is, Randy plays Cole, featuring Nancy King, Portland’s first lady of song. He also played the 17th Oregon Coast Jazz Party in 2019, accompanying Veronica Swift.

“I love to support a vocalist,” our Hero says, “to put surprising chords in there but still have everyone feel they’re all holding hands together and confident that everything is going to turn out all right.”

During the pandemic Randy has sustained his association with alto saxophonist Charles McPherson, in whose quartet he’d previously been touring the U.S., Europe, and China, recreating Charlie Parker with Strings (on Mercury, in 1949) in performances with symphony orchestras. In 2020, Porter produced and played on McPherson’s acclaimed Jazz Dance Suites, a collaboration with the San Diego Ballet, with which the saxophonist’s daughter is a dancer. And McPherson and Porter performed together at the PDX Portland Jazz Festival in February, 2020, too.

Besides all that, creating his albums (Thirsty Soul, Brio, Modern Reflections, Eight Little Feet) and writing music for the 2010 documentary Deep Green about solutions to man-made global warming, Porter is an educator, having performed and taught at the Jazz Camp West, the Port Townsend Jazz Festival and the Stanford Jazz Workshop. He conducts master classes and adjudicates student ensembles at high school and college jazz festivals, teaches jazz piano and theory at Portland’s Lewis and Clark College.

Randy Porter richly deserves his celebration as 2021 JJA Jazz Hero, and is sustaining all his activities that have earned him such acclaim.

Since relocating TRANSART from Brooklyn, where it had an exhibition home at the Medgar Evers College/CUNY, to the mid-Hudson Valley, Smith has focused her organization’s resources on bringing arts-based after-school programs, curriculum-based arts-in-education programs and staff development for public schools to communities in the region that have historically been marginalized.  She’s become a leading consultant to the area’s arts and humanities organizations, addressing issues of fine art and local history, as well as the cross-cultural aesthetics of the diaspora and world cultures.

In 2000, out of love and perseverance, Smith produced an afternoon concert with a work commissioned from pianist Ahmad Jamal.  That afternoon blossomed into Jazz in the Valley (JITV), an annually sold-out festival that has featured such celebrated masters as Hugh Masekela, Eddie Palmieri, Oscar Brown, Jr., Les McCann, Ron Carter, Stefon Harris, Marlena Shaw and Javon Jackson – who became its artistic director.

"It is a pleasure and an honor to know and work alongside Greer Smith," said Jackson. "She is one of a kind, deeply passionate, committed and absolute in her desire to bring jazz to the greater Poughkeepsie area.

"Throughout the year I witness first hand her resolve to bring together faithful supporters of Jazz In The Valley with talented artists and vendors for a spirited time at the annual festival, " he continued. "It's hard to know who loves Greer more -- the fans who attend or the numerous musicians who've graced her stage. I'm happy for this recognition for Greer Smith, one of my heroes!"

Saxophonist Donald Harrison, who has performed at the festival numerous times over the course of its 20 years, added, "Jazz In The Valley is an example of how a small group of committed music people, led by Greer Smith, can present a major and significant festival, one which has tremendous impact and should be supported globally. Musicians and festival-goers look forward to JITV with the same enthusiasm they have for Newport and North Sea festivals."

“The music is presented with a fun yet respectful manner that shows jazz isn’t a museum piece,” Albany-based photographer Rudy Lu has noted. That aligns with an image of the fest's founder and producer he's seen more than once: "Greer loves to dance and is often at the front of the stage dancing to one of the Latin jazz bands that are typically booked for Jazz in the Valley’s finale.”

The JJA may not have the sound or great rhythms of Latin jazz bands, but hopes Greer Smith finds being designated a Jazz Hero is something to dance about, too.

He points to jazz faculty and student performances at the Eastman School of Music and all of the other educational institutions in the region, whether high schools or colleges, as well as any jazz performance at any local concert hall, club or local restaurant.

He tirelessly advocates for increased opportunities to hear live jazz by utilizing all of the social media in his toolbox -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram -- besides his always up-to-date, of-the-moment website. As well as the live scene, he informs readers of new releases from jazz artists who have ties to our area, and provides coverage before, during and after each night of the nine-day Rochester International Jazz Festival.

It should be mentioned that Superhero Bell does all of this uncompensated, as a service to the music. He doesn’t think in terms of an incentive; he considers what he does a calling. In his own words: “There’s still a lot of work to be done to get this music heard more… I have been publishing JazzRochester in one form or another since 2005 in an effort to do some of that work.”

Such work never ends (we hope), so we thank Jazz Hero Gregory Bell for advancing western New York’s jazz music so much further.

After earning a music degree from the University of Southern California and graduating from grad school at Juilliard in 1966, Mario performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 15 seasons under conductors Zubin Mehta and Carlo Maria Giulini. In 1981 he was appointed principal trumpet with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Los Angeles Opera, with which he remained for a decade. He has recorded and toured Europe with the Los Angeles Brass Quintet and performed with the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, Radio City Music Hall Orchestra, and the Barnum & Bailey Circus. He has never stopped playing jazz.

In 2013 Guarneri decided to pay into his passion, founding the non-profit Jazz in the Neighborhood (JiTN) to sustain the art form, establish equity for local jazz artists, present emerging artists and sponsor neighborhood concerts. Since then JiTN has produced more than 350 concerts across the Bay Area, featuring a roster of more than 500 jazz artists. Every concert guarantees the musicians an equitable wage; the organization has paid out almost $300,000 to musicians over the past eight years.

JiTN significantly stepped up its game in response to the challenges brought on by the coronavirus, underwriting programs at the Oakland Public Conservatory and Oaktown Jazz Workshop, guaranteeing salaries for musicians who perform with the Bay Area Jazz Mobile and distributing $10,000 in relief aid grants to Bay Area jazz musicians. In collaboration with the Independent Musicians Alliance, an advocacy group Guarneri co-founded with Eric Whittington, proprietor of San Francisco’s Bird & Beckett Books & Records, and the Paul Dresher Ensemble, JitN currently provides free rehearsal space to jazz musicians. What it calls its “Safe Place to Play” program in West Oakland is ongoing and has allowed hundreds of musicians opportunities to create the music they love despite the pandemic.

Mario’s musical activism also has manifested in his invention of a brass pedagogical tool used all over the world (www.berp.com). He has taught trumpet for more than 55 years, including master classes in Asia and Europe and currently in San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s orchestral and Roots, Jazz, and American Music departments.

To hear Guarneri play jazz in the company of collaborators like Calvin Keys, Kash Killion, Pete Magadini, John Wiitala, Akira Tana, Randy Vincent and Erik Jekabson, check out one of his quartet albums, such as Choices and Tell Your Story. To hear him expand in a most unusual way, turn to his central role in composer Morton Subotnick’s A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur/After the Butterfly. But you may have heard him without realizing it: he’s contributed to hundreds of television and motion picture soundtracks, including featured solos for Lonesome Dove and Godfather III. Lest any of the credits he’s due go unnoticed, the JJA is proud to proclaim Mario Guarneri the 2021 Bay Area Jazz Hero.

It’s not the first time Dimitriou has made community service part of his highly successful business model. When he opened his club more than 40 years ago, Washington had very restrictive liquor laws. Dimitriou fought for and won permission from the (now defunct) State Liquor Board to allow high school students to hear the master musicians at Jazz Alley, arguing that it was a restaurant, not “just” a bar.

He also started a non-profit Pacific Jazz Institute so those same young people could enjoy, free of charge, more than a hundred “Meet the Masters” weekend workshops. Low income students were especially invited. Over the years, “Meet the Masters” artists have included Kurt Elling, Stanley Clarke, Betty Carter, Ray Brown and the cast of “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”

Dimitriou opened Jazz Alley in October 1980, and apart from a brief hiatus in 1985 has been operating the venue, a 420-seat room with a wrap-around loft and state-of-the-art sound system and sightlines, ever since. Having grown up in a family of jazz-loving Greek restaurateurs. John worked in the 1970s for his half-brother at a Pacific Ocean showroom where such artists as Stan Kenton, the Ink Spots and Frank Sinatra performed, and later at the more intimate Pioneer Banque, which featured Charles Mingus, Carmen McRae and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, among others.

A hobbyist drummer and pianist who modeled his playing after Tony Williams and Bill Evans – “They had nothing to worry about,” he jokes -- in the late 1970s Dimitriou moved to Washington, D.C., where he managed Blues Alley for two years. Back in Seattle in 1979, he briefly operated a large venue near SeaTac airport, The Place, where Evans played one of his last gigs.

By then, a club called Jazz Alley had already opened in Seattle’s University District; the owners, struggling, happily sold it to Dimitriou. After an over-extension in 1984 resulted in the shutdown of two branches, Jazz Alley re-opened amid the business and residential towers known as the Denny Regrade in 1985. Ever since, Dimitriou has focused on his kitchen as much as his stage – hence those free meals during Covid – and Jazz Alley has become Seattle’s primary jazz place as well as a destination for fancy dates and high-end family celebrations.

“What a great honor to be named by the Jazz Journalists Association the 2021 Seattle Jazz Hero!” said John Dimitriou when he heard about the award. “It's been wonderful to be able to provide meals for those in need while also keeping the heartbeat of our space alive.

“As to providing a room for those under legal drinking age, yes, that was a mission from the start. How else do we share the greats with potential future greats?" That’s the kind of question Jazz Heroes ask and, like John Dimitriou, answer.

Always an eager and early adopter of media, when the Internet became a viable platform for posting he became the Jazz Video Guy and sprang into action, since 2006 posting more than 2,500 jazz video interviews and features, with 50+ million views and 95+ thousand subscribers worldwide. In 2020 he launched a series called “Jazz Video Guy Live,” international in scope and often incorporating archival footage from European tv.

As he showed his love of jazz during his earlier career in New York City, Bret had been highly supportive of Tucson’s jazz scene even before he was able to flourish his hero’s cape in 2015, when Yvonne Ervin (late JJA vice president and 2010 Jazz Hero), who’d known him on the East Coast, returned here to found the Tucson Jazz Festival. This Fest brought many well-known subjects to Tucson, who Bret celebrated with in-person, videotaped interviews.

Each year’s fest began with the Tucson Jazz Institute’s award-winning Ellington Band opening for and playing with the festival headliner. In 2016, that was Bret’s friend tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath, who accepted a CD Recording Project Residency with the Tucson Jazz Institute -- under the aegis of the Tucson Jazz Music Foundation, of which Bret was an enthusiastic board member and supporter.

Bret created a documentary, following the NEA Jazz Master for three days during which he mentored students, recorded four songs with them, and engaged with educators, among others he ran into. Passing The Torch, which premiered at Heath’s birthday party in November, 2016 at the Fox Tucson Theatre with its star in attendance, was subsequently screened at the Arizona International Film Festival and the New York Jazz Film Festival, and continues to be shown in many Arizona schools.

Bret posts that “these videos are my legacy, my gift to future generations so they can celebrate this music and these musicians as I have, all my life.” But due to political developments, he also has increasingly turned his attention to social justice issues.

Tucson is ground zero for immigration and border issues, and Primack has documented the efforts of humanitarian groups such as Human Borders and Clinica Amistad. When he taught documentary filmmaking and digital video production for three years at Pima Community College, he produced a film about DACA students. After the Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre in October 2018, he began production of They Will Not Replace Us, about the effect of anti-Semitism on immigration during World War II, for which he has interviewed local Holocaust survivors and distinguished University of Arizona professor Noam Chomsky. He most recently produced a series of videos for a local synagogue on aspects of Jewish life in Tucson, including a complete seder.

He looks forward to aiding and abetting a post-pandemic live jazz scene in Tucson, confident it will come back stronger than ever. Jazz-wise, Tucson has much to be proud of: world-class artists, an acclaimed festival, one of the strongest college jazz programs in the world at University of Arizona, and several genuine jazz heroes, among whom is the most-deserving Bret Primack.

When the U.S. was struck by the global pandemic in March, the musical community of the District and areas radiating out from our nation’s Capitol was particularly devastated by the closure of performance venues and educational initiatives. Seeing a need to hold this community together, Herb and Aaron put their experiences as advocates and credibility as respected musicians to robust use. They initiated an informal group of “D.C. Music Stakeholders”—artists, promoters, venue owners, union representatives, journalists and others—to meet (virtually) twice a week and discuss solutions and new approaches to reviving the musical ecosystem.

Herb and Aaron also brought to these meetings local and national lawmakers and politicians (including several 2020 election candidates), police officials and other area experts to provide information and listen to the Stakeholders’ concerns. They spearheaded initiatives to address (and lobby for changes to) local and congressional legislation and engaged with Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office with regard to policies toward musicians and related businesses.

Herb is a D.C. native and lifelong resident who graduated from Duke Ellington School of the Arts as an alto saxophonist. He studied under Rodney Whitaker and Diego Rivera at Michigan State University and has performed at venues ranging from the White House and Lincoln Center to Mr. Henry’s Restaurant, the Capitol Hill spot at which he founded the Capitol Hill Jazz Jam Session in 2015. He founded Capitol Hill Jazz Foundation in 2015.

Aaron Myers grew up in Kerens, Texas, and spent time in Augusta, Georgia; Los Angeles; Fort Myers, Florida, and Corsicana, Texas, before moving to Washington. A pianist and vocalist, he is a veteran of the U.S. Army and of local, national politics: He ran for mayor of Corsicana at just 20 years old, worked as a 2008 field organizer for the Obama/Biden campaign, and as CHJF board chair has lobbied the D.C. Council and the U.S. Congress on jazz’s behalf.

In addition to their Stakeholders sessions, under the auspices of the Capitol Hill Jazz Foundation Herb and Aaron raised funds to provide emergency grants to local musicians, helped to organize and promote safe performance opportunities and, during the winter holiday season, executed a musical instrument giveaway for local students.

“Herb has been my partner in [doing] good,” Aaron Myers says. “He’s been a fierce advocate for Washingtonians and his institutional knowledge is unmatchable. I’m grateful to work with him!” Herb Scott says, “We are truly honored to be recognized for our efforts to make full use of jazz as a strategic tool of economic development in Washington, D.C. and beyond.” There are no people more deserving of the title 2021 Washington, D.C. Jazz Hero.

I remember thinking what a bit of genius it was to pair off attending parents, have them each take two ends of a blanket and physically swing their child inside it to the strains of Count Basie’s music, just to acquaint them with the sensation of the essence of jazz. Today, for Jazz WaHi Kids, she’s posting videos introducing kids to Ella Fitzgerald via singalongs, and Charlie Parker, using Chris Raschka’s beautifully illustrated book Charlie Parker Played Be Bop and I’m further convinced of Louise’s hipness after seeing her renditions of Slim Gaillard’s “Potato Chips” and Bird’s “Now’s the Time” with her children’s choir.

“In fact, just today I had the kids singing, ‘So What,’” said Rogers, a native of Durham, New Hampshire, during a phone call informing her of her JJA Jazz Hero Award.

She has made her mark in vocal jazz over the past 15 years, beginning with 2005’s Bass-ically Speaking (her bass-voice tribute to Sheila Jordan’s duets with Cameron Brown), earning accolades for her six recordings to date, the most recent being a jazz interpretations of the music of Gabriel Fauré done with her husband and musical partner, pianist-arranger Mark Kross, Fauré at Play (2015). And while maintaining a career as a working musician, Rogers continues to promulgate Jazz in the Heights through her programs for children and adults alike, as she’s done since her professional start.

After getting her music education degree from the University of New Hampshire, she taught K-through-6th grade for a couple of years before moving to New York City. “I went through the usual kind of music training,” she recalled. “I was doing Kindermusik classes in the neighborhood but what I really wanted to do was teach them jazz, too. I thought, ‘There’s got to be a way to introduce young kids to jazz.’” She started Beboppin’ Tots in 1998, holding classes at the Castle Village Community Room and Our Savior's Atonement Lutheran Church.

By 2014, she and Kross had formed Jazz WaHi, Inc. a non-profit promoting jazz performance and music education in Washington Heights. Their mission statement: To connect jazz musicians with an audience of jazz lovers and to expand that audience through accessible performances and educational opportunities.

In February, 2015, Rogers and Kross began hosting weekly Wednesday jam sessions in a vacant side room at the Irish bar/restaurant Le Cheile. It became the home for lively appearances by singers and instrumentalists from around the neighborhood. Then the couple started a separate vocal series on Thursday nights at Le Cheile, showcasing singers Teri Roiger, Elisabeth Lohninger, La Tanya Hall, Darmon Meader, Amy London, Lauren Kinhan, Suzanne Lorge, Leonisa Ardizzone and Alexis Cole, among others.

“When I started it, I wanted it to be something that would attract people from the neighborhood but also made people want to come up to the neighborhood,” said Louise. Out of these sets came the Washington Heights Jazz Festival. The third annual one, held last March 2020, made it just under the wire before New York City went into pandemic-caused lockdown. Rogers and Kross plan a fourth for November 4 through 7, 2021, at a venue yet to be determined.

“We moved it to November hoping that we’d be able to do it live by then,” said Louise. “And we found out last week that we got a grant for it from LMCC (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council). So it’s going to be nice. We also just had our first annual Jazz Composers Competition. Bassist Robert Fernandez, who was the winner, will be presenting his new music at the next Jazz WaHi festival.”

Most immediately impressive, Rogers reported that, “Jazz WaHi hasn't missed a beat since the entire Covid mess started. Everything continues online: Jazz Salon every Wed from 8-9(ish) p.m.; the Jazz WaHi Vocal Series on the first Thursday of each month. And Jazz WaHi has been sponsoring Friday Night Jazz at Kismat, virtual, since the lockdowns began.”

Stay tuned through her website, of course, for more swinging up in the Heights, courtesy of Jazz Hero Louise Rogers.