Now posted: The 2020 JJA Jazz Awards Winners Live-Streaming Party, Archival Edition, with minor trims, color correction and sound-synching of the June 18 online-event which has accrued in a week some 8500 views — more, as Marguerite Horberg of the JJA’s presenting collaborator HotHouse noted, than attended President Trump’s rally in Tulsa.
An invaluable document providing clear views of current jazz stars’ responses to the challenges of the day — how they balance coping with social isolation and continue teaching, react to social and gender justice issues, adapt to more family time and less touring, create across generations and over geographical distances, among other topics — the two-and-a-half hour Archival Edition features 33 of 2020’s 36 Jazz Awards winners in six chat-groups, with pre-recorded remarks or images, punctuated by brief music clips from galas past.
When the JJA board began in April to dream of a Jazz Awards party as an online event, there was no precedent for convening a large circle of musicians and journalists for interactive discussions in real-time. The quick emergence of the app Zoom showed a way, however, to employ video conference call technology for something more communal and, it turns out, intimate than galas at music venues such as those the JJA has formerly held in New York City at the Blue Note, New School, City Winery, Jazz Standard, Birdland, Alice Tully Hall of Lincoln Center, South Street Seaport and the Knitting Factory.
Convening the music-winners around shared interests, producer and JJA president Howard Mandel sat in with two groups — an opener with Terri Lynn Carrington, Jane Ira Bloom, Kris Davis and Linda May Han Oh, and a finale with Anat Cohen, Zakir Hussain and Miguel Zenon. Alisa Clancy, program director and show host of KCSM (San Mateo) and a jazz educator, represented Conover-McPartland Award winner Richard Hadlock, and moderated talk among Joe Lovano, Allison Miller, Bill Frisell and Wycliffe Gordon. Nate Chinen spoke with Kurt Elling and Cécile McLorin Salvant.
JazzTimes editor Mac Randall heard from Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Brandee Younger, Lakecia Benjamin, Joel Ross and Lauren Sevian. Mark Stryker, author of Book of the Year Jazz From Detroit, interviewed Roscoe Mitchell, Tomeka Reid and Nicole Mitchell about the legacy and 50th anniversary activities of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, as well as overall Chicago influences.
Lifetime Achievement in Jazz honoree Carla Bley and Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism winner Stanley Crouch both offered pre-recorded remarks (Crouch’s, written by his wife, was read by Derrick Lucas of WGMC, Rochester), here:
as did Branford Marsalis (whose Record of the Year-winning The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul provided title music) and Sonny Rollins (from 2013).
Clips of Randy Weston speaking and playing solo piano from 2016, of Sheila Jordan with Cameron Brown,
Réne Marie with her band, Organ Monk and Herlin Riley’s quintet offered musical relief from the talk.
JJA board member Carolyn McClair assisted in production of the Jazz Awards Live-Streaming event, soliciting sponsorships from the Blue Note Jazz Club (NYC), the Joyce and George Wein Foundation Inc., the Jazz Foundation of America and ECM Records; Robbin Ahrold’s Century Media Partners and Jazz Promo Services also contributed support. Vedran Residbegovic — working with HotHouseGlobal, the live-streaming collective project of the Chicago-based Center for International Performance and Exhibition dba HotHouse — was the production director; Michal Shapiro, post-production video editor, and Howard Mandel produced the program.
Response has been excellent. “Great to know that it has garnered such traction,” Terri Lyne Carrington has written. “It was really a great event – happy to have been a part of it!”
“Thanks for putting together such a hip show,” wrote Joe Lovano. “It was great to see everybody and hear what’s folks are up to.”
Added Bill Frisell, “Thank you so much for all your beautiful energy putting this together and keeping things going. I loved what Wycliffe said about EVERYONE should play an instrument. I’ve always believed this to be true. Wow. Music is good. Can not wait til we can all be back together in the same room eating and drinking and playing music and hugging each other and all that stuff.”
While the JJA has no immediate plans for an in-person get-together, the organization is looking into producing further experiments with new media to advance engagement with music and teach journalistic skills in online seminar formats. Information will be published here as those thoughts develop. Meanwhile, HotHouse (which offers frequent new content at its Twitch.tv/HotHouseGlobal channel, has scheduled an extraordinary two-day broadcast from Havana for July 18 and 19, in support of ending the U.S. blockade and celebrating the efforts of Cuban medical professionals in combating Covid-19.
