JJA members love jazz all year long — but April is the hippest month, and 2024 is special, as Willard Jenkins, a JJA founder, has been named a Jazz Master!!!,
getting the A.B. Spellman Award for jazz advocacy, from the National Endowment for the Arts!
Big time congratulations to Willard! He’s done even more than birth the JJA. Heear his NEA-produced podcast, and watch Willard’s investiture (along with fellow new honorees Amina Claudine Myers, Gary Bartz and Terence Blanchard) and the gala NEA’s tribute concert on April 14, 7:30 pm ET, on www.JJAJazzAwards.org!
Also see the full display, portraits and bios, of 2024 JJA Jazz Heroes — 33 “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz” in 30 locales, including for the first time cross-border Baja, Mexico-San Diego, published April 15. And on April 23, finalists for the 2024 JJA Jazz Awards will be posted at JJAJazzAwards. Winners will be revealed there May 8.
Welcome new JJA members photographer writer-photographer James Adams of Hayward, CA, writer Marco Cangiano in New York City, and Vermont Jazz Center (Brattleboro) director-saxophonist Eugene Uman. Read about what some of the rest of are doing on p 2 ——— >
