2024 Jazz Heroes

James “Dub” Hudson leads a rich musical life, having started as a 20 year-old reeds player in the 8th Army Band in Korea, continuing through the next seven decades as a first call player for concert artists, touring shows, recording sessions with artists as current as André 3000, lead alto saxophonist and clarinetist for the African-American Philharmonic Orchestra and African-American Jazz Orchestra, 29 years as a music educator and Band Director for the City of Atlanta school system, ongoing teacher and mentor for serious musicians coming up from throughout the metro-Atlanta area. —By Howard Mandel

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There is an old insulting adage that “those who cannot do, teach.” Although the thought behind such a statement has been continually disproven, it’s particularly evident that the quote’s creator is unfamiliar with Austin’s 2024 Jazz Hero Andre Hayward. Indeed, Hayward’s impressive career as a musician is what has enabled him to become such an excellent educator in major institutional settings as well as modest community schools and one-to-one settings.— By Rob Shepherd

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Photographer Efrain Ribeiro, Baltimore’s 2024 Jazz Hero, was born in Japan to Peruvian parents while his father worked for the United Nations/World Health Organization in Korea; he spent his youth in El Salvador, Argentina and Maryland, where he remains. His rich photographic documentation of the Baltimore jazz scene has made him a major player of the city’s music community.

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In stressing that she is “a volunteer host” on Worcester, Massachusetts Public Radio WICN-FM, Jazz Hero Bonnie Johnson makes an important point about local heroes we often overlook, people who effectively donate their time and knowledge via unpaid slots on public and community radio. Johnson’s “Colors of Jazz” will have occupied the Sunday noon-to-4 p.m. slot for 14 years come July, and in the process the Worcester native has become the area’s prominent jazz messenger. —Bob Blumenthal

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Musician and artistic director Eugene Uman and operations manager/graphic designer/multi-media consultant Elsa Borrero have worked tirelessly to build the Vermont Jazz Center‘s community straddling the Vermont/New Hampshire border. —By David Beckett

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Ann Tappan wrote and administered a 2001 MAC/NEA/Jazz Montana grant for a creative music program linking professional musicians to state-wide audiences and K-12 students, and has served as a faculty member of the Montana Jazz Piano Workshop, artist-in-residence at Yellowstone National Park and as a performing and recording artist frequently throughout the Northwest. — By MJ Wiliams

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Ahmed Abdullah is a Jazz Hero in many worlds, fueled by what he calls jazz: “the music of the spirit.” Playing trumpet since age 13, and even before that alert to the music’s African roots, he’s a native New Yorker who has traveled the spaceways in Sun Ra’s Arkestra, worked with myriad professional and community organizations, remains an active educator and has established his trumpet sound noted for clarity, gusto, ambition and good cheer.— By Ronald E. Scott

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We of the jazz community in the greater New York Capital Region are deeply honored to be afforded the opportunity by the Jazz Journalists Association to acknowledge jazz drummer, percussionist, historian/ archivist, educator, lecturer and generous mentor Harold “Hal” Miller as our Jazz Hero.— By Linda Brown

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The JJA proudly hails drummer Quentin Baxter and trumpeter Charlton Singleton, the dynamic duo at the core of the Grammy Award-winning quintet Ranky Tanky, as Charleston Jazz Heroes for their ambitious, tireless promotion and support of the local and regional musics of the South Carolina Lowcountry.— By Don Palmer

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John D’earth came to Charlottesville in 1981 from New York City where his band Cosmology had cut an eponymously titled record with Vanguard co-produced by Collin Walcott (1977). He settled into a weekly residency at Miller’s Downtown where he mentored a young bartender named, Dave Matthews and played with several players including LeRoy Moore and Carter Beauford who became central to the Dave Matthews Band.— By Russell Perry

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The Chicago jazz scene would be considerably undernourished without the Hyde Park Jazz Society, creators of the internationally known Hyde Park Jazz Festival. And the HPJS would be unimaginable without the efforts of this year’s Chicago Jazz Heroes, its executive board: president Charlie Thomas, vice-president Almarie Wagner, and secretary Judith Stein.

 — By Neil Tesser

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Denver Carlos “Lando” Cartagena is simply the most important jazz radio personality in the history of Denver and the Front Range! Since he arrived in Denver from New York via Puerto Rico in the late 1970s, he has made a great impact and difference on the radio and to the jazz scene here. — By Arturo Gómez
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Jazz journalist Charles Latimer has been a dedicated advocate for Detroit’s musicians for more than 20 years, covering local talent in publications including the Detroit Metro Times and his blog I Dig Jazz, where he also reviews albums and metro-area concerts. He’s used those platforms to generate support for the scene here, so local listeners buy local artists’ music, attend their concerts, and contribute to their  social-media promotional campaigns. His approach brought him some popularity: He’s often become good friends with musicians he’s interviewed, and every time he is at a concert or jazz related function, he is approached by players and jazz fans alike, eager to chat.—By Veronica Johnson

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“Nothing just happens,” said Lois Masteller, owner of The Jazz Corner, Hilton Head Island‘s premier jazz showcase, dinner club and 25-year success story. Her philosophy is: “Identify what you want to happen, and find the road to accomplish that,” through thought, planning, being responsibile and accountable. The club is a success — called one of the “Top 100 Great Jazz Rooms,” by DownBeat magazine — that’s because she and her late husband Bob made it happen, with a business plan involving more than numbers and dollars.— By Gloria Krolak

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Historian, educator and author David Leander Williams has done more than anyone to dig into and amplify the proud heritage of Indianapolis’ Indiana Avenue, once the mainstream of the African-American community at the center of our most populous city and state capital. His motivation can be characterized by his reaction when he tried to help a niece find reference books painting a picture of that past, and was shocked that there were none. “I became angry,” Williams told WRTV’s Marc Mullins in a 2023 interview. “I thought somebody should do something about this.” Then he realized: “I had to.” — By Leslie Lynnton Fuller

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Armed with degrees from Washington University, the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the University of Missouri-Columbia, in the performing arts, journalism, and law, in 1976 bassist and songwriter Mark Edelman founded Theater League, a not-for-profit community-based performing arts organization to present the best of Broadway musicals on tour to Kansas City audiences and beyond. His endeavor became so successful that Edelman, who for fun had recorded some self-described “Jewish themed parody rock songs,” didn’t get to professionally practicing his specialties. Rather, he’s used Theater League as a platform from which to affect cultural preservation as well as ignite broad changes in KC. — By David Basse

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Since the early 1970s Marla Gibbs has been a force participating in and supporting the varied arts in Los Angeles’s African-American community. Once she won the role of the maid Florence Johnson on the hit CBS TV show The Jeffersons (in 1975) she committed serious financial resources to the Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension (UGMAA), the umbrella organization of pianist-composer Horace Tapscott and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, which continues as a significant cultural force to this day.— By Steven Isoardi

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Jazz Woman to the Rescue! A daughter of Newark, the youngest of seven in a musical household, and longtime resident of jazz-imbued, Antoinette Montague is a force to be reckoned with. A vocalist with a penchant for turning a tune in any genre into jazz or blues, this activist is found where the music meets civil and human rights.— By Susan Brink

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For almost seven years now, Peter Harris has been swimming against this current, single handedly producing and leading a four-night-a-week performance series at the Bayou Bar in the Pontchartrain Hotel — a series that is hands-down the city’s most consistent and inspiring connection to the current national state of jazz, call it post-bop, mainstream, or just “modern.” — By Ashley Kahn

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Jazz Hero Bill Saxton is a true New Yorker, born in Harlem Hospital and raised in the community of Harlem. He attended New York City public schools, taking up the clarinet at Frederick Douglass Junior High School after missing out on getting a saxophone — the instrument with which he’s made his name. He has since composed over 80 compositions such as “Beneath the Surface,” “One for Booker” and “Priorities,” has performed (mostly on tenor) with an array of outstanding musicians, and has been a member of large ensembles including Frank Foster’s Loud Minority, Clark Terry’s Big Bad Band and most recently the Charles Tolliver Big Band. —By Ronald Scott

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After nine years immersed in Canada’s theatrical community, back in 1996 Catherine O’Grady made a tight, left turn into jazz administration — taking the reins of Ottawa’s then-16-year-old jazz festival. When she retired from the festival and a related children’s event last year, after 27 years at its helm, she had forged a reputation as a passionate music champion with a deep well of curiosity, which saw her embrace and showcase an exceptionally broad scope of improvised music and build a highly successful year-round presence on our national capital’s arts scene. —By James Hale

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Writer, broadcaster and performer Lynn Darroch has been at the center of the Portland jazz community for more than 40 years. A seasoned jazz historian, Lynn’s commitment to interviewing the multitude of artists in our community is unparalleled. His respect for their various approaches, techniques and influences consistently enlightens and educates. — By Marcia Hocker and Rick Mitchell

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Trumpeter, composer, educator, and band leader Iván Trujillo, based in Ensenada, Baja California just 70 miles south of the border, is one of this binational region’s most versatile and impactful musicians. He plays jazz and classical music, electro-acoustic and free improvisation, as founder and director of several Baja-based bands, and has established enduring collaborations with U.S.- side artists such as trombonist Michael Dessen, bassist Steuart Liebig and drummer Nathan Hubbard.  —By Daniel Atkinson

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A San Francisco Bay Area native, Laurie Antonioli is an esteemed educator, bandleader, and recording artist who has nurtured a generation of singers in Europe and California. She’s played a central role in the Bay Area’s emergence as a hotbed for jazz vocalists in the 21st century as both a private teacher and as the head of the Vocal Jazz Studies program at Berkeley’s California Jazz Conservatory, the nation’s first independent, accredited school devoted solely to jazz.— By Andy Gilbert

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Thomas Marriott is Seattle’s Jazz hero for 2024, in recognition of his founding and implementation of the Seattle Jazz Fellowship, a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to the local jazz community.

 — By Paul Rauch
All About Jazz, Earshot Jazz
 Seattlejazzscene.com

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Jazz has always been big here in Tucson.  Even before its annual festival debuted ten years ago, the city boasted one the country’s largest jazz societies, whose regular concerts featured many of the world’s most important jazz artists alongside an array of well-known and accomplished locals. The only thing missing was a dedicated jazz venue, until Tucson-born Arthur Vint flew back home from New York City to open the magnificent Century Room at the historic Hotel Congress. — By Alan Hershowitz

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A native of Washington, D.C. who matriculated at Georgetown University, our 2024 JJA Jazz Hero Katea Stitt is the proud daughter of master jazz saxophonist and legend Sonny Stitt. For 33 years she has been the host of “Beyond Borders,” a weekly jazz and world music program on WPFW, the District’s community radio “Jazz & Justice” station, which she’s also long served as Program Director. Katea has produced radio documentaries on Morocco for the Pacifica network, Inside the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music and The Gnawa Festival of Essaouira, spotlighting legendary festivals. — By Willard Jenkins

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