Drummer Herlin Riley, certainly one of 20 inaugural recipients of the Jazz Legacies Fellowship
Skip Bolen/WireImage/Getty Photographs
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Skip Bolen/WireImage/Getty Photographs
A brand new fellowship introduced this week offers 20 jazz musicians $100,000 every, no strings hooked up. Only one stipulation: They need to be a minimum of 62 years outdated.
The Andrew W. Mellon Basis got here up with the concept of honoring elder musicians with the Jazz Legacies Fellowship, says president Elizabeth Alexander.
“Lots of the of us who’ve been making the music eternally have been in want of help,” remembers Alexander. “After we thought of what would the fellowship seem like, what wouldn’t it imply to essentially say ‘We acknowledge your brilliance and we would like, at this level in your lives, to have the ability to be as useful as potential?’ “
Mellon partnered with The Jazz Basis of America, a bunch that usually offers help to struggling musicians.
Govt Director Joe Petrucelli explains: “The lifetime of a working jazz musician is a precarious one. They do not have satisfactory insurance coverage, they actually stay gig-to-gig. And if you encounter a disaster, there’s little or no to fall again on.”
The money prize is only one a part of the fellowship, which additionally contains a wide range of private {and professional} companies.
The Jazz Basis assembled a panel of luminaries — together with Jason Moran, Terri Lyne Carrington, Arturo O’Farrill, esperanza spalding and Christian McBride — to give you an preliminary checklist of 20 fellowship recipients, emphasizing largely unheralded artists. Petrucelli says the panel requested: “Who’re the artists who’re so deserving of an honor like this however have by no means obtained something prefer it?”
They’re as younger as 62-year-old drummer Shannon Powell — and as outdated as trumpeter Dizzy Reece, now 94.
At first, Petrucelli puzzled what late-career musicians would do with $100,000. He notes, “Artists nicely into their 80s have these very rigorous and demanding journey schedules which can be sort of a requirement, simply as a way to survive. So the monetary safety provided by the fellowship might give them a chance to decelerate the tempo the place they need to.”
As an alternative, what he heard over and over was they need to use the cash to proceed their work. Petrucelli says these are “artists who’ve composed operas which can be unfinished that can now have a chance to finish them. Musicians who’ve archives of unreleased recordings that they’ve by no means actually been capable of get round to evaluating and releasing.”
68-year-old drummer Herlin Riley spent his profession preserving the beat for greats like Wynton Marsalis, George Benson, Ahmad Jamal and Marcus Roberts. When he discovered about successful the fellowship, he says he channeled comic Redd Foxx.
“I felt like Fred Sanford when he fakes the center assault: ‘I am coming to see you, Elizabeth!’,” recalled Riley.
Riley appreciates that the glory is coming at this stage of his life.
“Oftentimes, it occurs the place you get your accolades after you move away. It is so good to get your flowers whilst you can nonetheless scent them,” he provides.
As an alternative of investing in his continued work, Riley says he intends to offer away his money prize. “I attempt to be a giving and a sharing individual,” he says. “So I am completely happy that I might help make a distinction in another folks’s lives.”
The Jazz Basis of America’s Joe Petrucelli says the plan is to award 30 extra Jazz Legacies Fellowships over the subsequent three years, a minimum of.
The 2025 Jazz Legacies Fellows are:
● George Cables, 80, pianist, Queens, N.Y.
● Valerie Capers, 89, pianist, Bronx, N.Y.
● George Coleman, 89, saxophonist, New York, N.Y.
● Akua Dixon, 76, cellist, Westchester, N.Y.
● Manty Ellis, 92, guitarist, Milwaukee, Wisc.
● Tom Harrell, 78, trumpeter, New York, N.Y.
● Billy Hart, 84, drummer, Montclair, N.J.
● Bertha Hope, 88, pianist, New York, N.Y.
● Roger Humphries, 81, drummer, Pittsburgh, Pa.
● Carmen Lundy, 70, vocalist, Los Angeles, Calif.
● Amina Claudine-Myers 82, pianist, New York, N.Y.
● Roscoe Mitchell, 84, multireedist, Fitchburg, Wisc.
● Johnny O’Neal, 68, pianist, New York, N.Y.
● Shannon Powell, 62, drummer, New Orleans, La.
● Julian Priester, 89, trombonist, Seattle, Wash.
● Dizzy Reece, 94, trumpeter, Bronx, N.Y.
● Herlin Riley, 68, drummer, New Orleans, La.
● Michele Rosewoman, 71, pianist, New York, N.Y.
● Dom Salvador, 87, pianist, Lengthy Island, N.Y.
● Reggie Workman, 87, bassist, New York, N.Y.
