Winners of the Jazz Journalists Association’s 2018 Jazz Awards, the 22rd annual honors for 
excellence in music and music journalism conferred by the international professional organization of writers, photographers, broadcasters, videographers and new media content providers, were announced online today. Recipients of Awards in 39 categories were chosen by JJA voting members from 140 nominees, all posted (as are 22 nation-wide 2018 Jazz Heroes) at JJA Jazz Awards.
Saxophonist-composer Benny Golson, honored for his Lifetime Achievement in Jazz, and writer-researcher-historian Patricia Willard, the first woman to be celebrated for her Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism by the JJA, lead the honorees. Other notable 2018 Jazz Awards winners include drummer Matt Wilson as Musician of the Year and for Record of the Year, Honey and Salt: Music Inspired by the Poetry of Carl Sandburg (Palmetto Records), and Fred Hersch,
Pianist of the Year and author of Book of the Year About Jazz for his memoir, Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz (Crown Archetype).
Most musicians will receive their engraved statuettes in front of their audiences at U.S. performances during the summer. Awards for media-related work will be presented at the 2018 Jazz Awards party, a fundraiser for the non-profit JJA, open to the public, at the New School’s Arnhold Hall, 55 W. 13th St., from 4 to 7 pm on June 12, 2018. The Leni Stern trio, singer Polly Gibbons and others to be announced will perform. Tickets are on sale now.
The 22rd annual JJA Jazz Awards again celebrates the creativity of women in jazz, with soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom, clarinetist Anat Cohen, baritone saxophonist Claire Daly, guitarist Mary Halvorson, flutist Nicole Mitchell, bassist Linda May Han Oh, cellist Tomeka Reid, vocalists Cecile McLorin Salvant and Jazzmeia Horn and orchestra-leading composer-arranger Maria Schneider among the honorees. Jazz Awards also go to trumpeter Tom Harrell, saxophonists Chris Potter and Miguel Zenon, pianist Vijay Iyer, organist Dr. Lonnie Smith, writer Nate Chinen, broadcaster Neil Tesser and photographer Michal Jackson, among others. Please visit the list and distribute the link, https://goo.gl/EwtvU2, but don’t cut and paste all the winners’ names.
Sponsors for the 2018 JJA Jazz Awards include Jazz Foundation of America, Berklee College of Music, New School Jazz, the Joyce and George Wein Foundation, the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, Century Media Partners, the Jazz Education Network, North Coast Brewing Company, the Tucson Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, San Jose Jazz, Montreal Jazz Festivals, Resonance Records, Verve Label Group, Concord Jazz, Blue Note Records, HighNote-Savant Records, Motéma Music, Sunnyside Records, Thirsty Ear Recordings, Jazzheads, SFJazz, the Jazz Institute of Chicago, MCG Jazz, Jazz St. Louis, Jazz Bridge, Collective Eye Productions, Scott Thompson Public Relations, Braithwaite & Katz Communications, Jazz Promo Services and WDCB Radio.
For further information about the 2018 Jazz Awards, Jazz Awards party at Arnhold Hall on June 12 or the Jazz Journalists Association, contact Howard Mandel, President@JazzJournalists.org or Jim Eigo, Jim@JazzPromoServices.com.
