The JJA has announced honors for 22 “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz” in 20 U.S. 
cities, filling the 2019 slate of Jazz Heroes. From Amherst, Massachusetts to Los Angeles, California, Seattle to South Florida, all the heroes are one way or another and sometimes simultaneously presenters, educators, non-profit administrators, public faces of grassroots organizations or active players sustaining and developing America’s native-born music in their local communities and beyond. The complete list of honorees, with photo portraits and biographies, is posted at JJA Jazz Awards: Jazz Heroes.
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Tenor saxophonist Paul Carr, founder of Washington D.C.’s Jazz Academy of Music; singer Suzanne Cloud, former executive director of Philadelphia’s Jazz Bridge; Tallahassee-based pianist Bob Dogan, mentoring young players; flutist Holly Hofmann, founder of the UC San Diego Jazz Camp; trumpeter Steve Kenny, who’s established series at St. Paul’s Black Dog café and Minneapolis’ Jazz Central Studio, and New Orleans brass band drummer Derrick Tabb, who established the Roots of Music after-school program, are among the musicians doing something extra that has resulted in their being feted by fans and friends in events co-hosted by the JJA at which they’ll receive engraved statuettes.
Harlem salon hostess Marjorie Eliot, Indianapolis Jazz Foundation and Indy Jazz Fest producer David Allee, executive director of Portland’s Biamp PDX Jazz Festival Don Lucoff, and drummers John Bishop and Matt Jorgensen, who run Origin Records and launched the Ballard Jazz Festival are also named as Jazz Heroes. As JJA president Howard Mandel writes about South Florida Jazz Hero Dr. Joan Cartwright, Jazz Heroes are models for “anyone whose ambitions extend to being creative, innovative, expressive, self-realized, in the moment while communing with others, sharing experience, telling truth, and seeking beauty.”
The Jazz Journalists Association established its Jazz Heroes campaign in 2010, having since 2001 called select honorees members of the JJA’s “A Team.” The Jazz Heroes campaign is intended to help grassroots jazz communities celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month, culminating in International Jazz Day (April 30). It’s the first stage of the JJA’s annual Jazz Awards, bestowed by professional members of the JJA for excellence in music and music journalism. Nominees for 2019 Jazz Awards will be announced mid-April, with winners of those Awards revealed on or about May 1.
Entities collaborating on 2019 Jazz Heroes presentations include B Sharps Jazz Club, the Biamp PDX Jazz Festival and Jack London Revue, the Carr Center, the Hyde Park Jazz Society, the Los Angeles Jazz Foundation, MCGJazz, JazzPolice.com and Westminster Presbyterian Church. North Coast Brewing Company is beverage sponsor of the JJA Jazz Heroes campaign. For more information on the JJA Jazz Heroes, Jazz Awards or the Jazz Journalists Association itself, contact Howard Mandel, President@JazzJournalists.org.
