Born in Los Angeles, raised in Bakersfield, and now living in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, Gregory Porter has made the world his musical home. A frequent guest performer with the Jazz at Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra, Porter also maintains a residency at Smoke Jazz in New York. He appears on 2 tracks on the new Nicola Conte album, appeared on the Joules Holland BBC show in mid April. This year among the many festivals and events he will be on include the ElbJazz Festival in Hamburg, the North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland and the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta. With a voice that can caress or confront, embrace or exhort, Grammy nominee, Gregory Porter exhibits such an incredible degree of vocal mastery that no less a jazz luminary than Wynton Marsalis had gone on record to call him: a fantastic young singer, which makes the face that Water is his recording debut more impressive.
The Jazz FM Awards 2013: Meet the Nominees: Robert Glasper – Album of the Year
Grammy nominated Robert Glasper has long kept one foot planted firmly in jazz and the other in hip-hop and R&B. He’s worked extensively with Q-Tip, playing keyboards on the rapper’s 2008 album The Renaissance and co-writing the album single “Life Is Better” which featured his label mate Norah Jones. Glasper also serves as the music director in Yasiin Bey’s touring band, and has toured with the multi-platinum R&B singer Maxwell. The Los Angeles Times once wrote that “it’s a short list of jazz pianists who have the wherewithal to drop a J Dilla reference into a Thelonious Monk cover, but not many jazz pianists are Robert Glasper,” adding that “he’s equally comfortable in the worlds of hip-hop and jazz,” and praising the organic way in which he “builds a bridge between his two musical touchstones.” Glasper drove that point home with his last album, 2009’s Double-Booked, which was split neatly in half. The first part featured his acoustic Trio, which had gathered a great deal of acclaim in the jazz world and beyond over the course of two previous Blue Note albums. The second part featured his electric Experiment band and hinted at things to come, even earning the keyboardist his first GRAMMY nomination for “All Matter,” a collaboration with the singer Bilal that was among the contenders in the Best Urban/Alternative Performance category in 2010. Reflecting back, Glasper is rightly proud of Black Radio, but also humbled and grateful for the outpouring of support and talent that it took to bring the album into being. “Everyone just said yes, period, we’ll do it. It was smoother than I ever thought it would be to get all these great, amazing artists to come together and do this project.”
The Jazz FM Awards 2013: Meet the Nominees: Pat Metheny – Album of the Year
Winner of 34 Grammy nominations, 19 Grammy awards, 3 Gold Records, and 37 recordings, Pat Metheny has had established himself in the music industry. However, with Metheny, you simply never know what is coming next. But among the many things that make this ever-changing artist so special is the consistent level of commitment and quality that he brings to everything he does. Pat Metheny, Chris Potter, Ben Williams, and Antonio Sanchez make up the Unity Band. After two consecutive yet wildly different solo recordings, (the innovative Orchestrion and last year’s Grammy-winning baritone guitar outing What’s It All About); Metheny returns with a quartet record, Unity Band. This band is a real manifestation of those big ideas as one singular sound. We are using all of the unique qualities available to us as individuals and as an ensemble and, we hope, creating a greater whole to make something true to itself.
The Jazz FM Awards 2013: Meet the Nominees: Keith Jarrett – Album of the Year
Keith Jarrett is an American pianist and composer who performs both jazz and classical music. Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis. Since the early 1970s, he has enjoyed a great deal of success in jazz, jazz-fusion, and classical music as a group leader and a solo performer. His improvisations draw not only from the traditions of jazz, but from other genres as well, especially Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music. In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize He was the first, and to this day, the only recipient not to share the prize with a co-recipient. In 2004, he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize. In 2008, he was inducted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame in the magazine’s 73rd Annual Readers’ Poll.
The Jazz FM Awards 2013: Meet the Nominees: Troyka – Cutting Edge Award for Jazz Innovation
Troyka are Chris Montague (guitars and loops), Joshua Blackmore (drums) and Kit Downes (organ), three young musicians based in London whose intense live shows have seen them hotly tipped to follow in the foot steps of Polar Bear and Portico Quartet and become the next young band to explode from the capital’s fertile jazz scene. A multi-textured trio with a febrile imagination where no role is pre-defined, their music twists and mutates in an on-going dialogue inspired by a shared love of Apex Twin, the angular world of iconclastic New York saxophonist Tim Berne and the blues-jazz-rock groove of legendary Steely Dan and Billy Cobham guitarist Wayne Krantz. With their visceral mash-up of rock, jazz and dance music, Trokya sound more like Tony William’s Lifetime remix by Burial than the classic Hammond organ trio. But then that’s the point, they’re part of a new generation of young musicians who refuse to be constrained by the old boundaries. To whom the old question of ‘what is it’ are replaced by is it any good? Who live in a post hip-hop world where you can take whatever source materials you like and do your own singular thing with it.
The Jazz FM Awards 2013: Meet the Nominees: Django Bates – Cutting Edge Award for Jazz Innovation
Django was born in a house near New Beckenham Station where a ropy, semitone flat D’Almaine Piano was the most fascinating toy in the house. Growing up, many family friends and vagrants passed through the home and many were artists or musicians who gave Django music lessons. A few were unknown to the Bates family, and it was a mystery what they were doing in the house at all. Django’s mother encouraged him to attend weird old folks’ houses for lessons on trumpet, piano, violin and guitar whilst his father played eccentric music from all genres at him from babyhood onwards. On leaving school in 1977, Django attended Morley College FTYM for two years. In 1979, he left the Royal College of Music after two weeks as the pianos had signs on them saying, “Not to be used for the playing of Jazz music”. Luckily he already had some teaching work at a school for reluctant Catholics, and a Friday night residency at the Waterside Theatre in Rotherhithe. In this romantic building, Jonny Edgecombe ran a jazz club at which Django and friends would provide the support act for John Stevens, Harry Beckett, John Taylor, Stan Tracey, Dudu Pukwana and many more great improvisers. “It was an education in how to make one’s music personal, and how to present it to drunk Dockland dwellers without being lynched”, recalls Django. As a result of this regular gig, Django was invited to play and tour with Dudu Pukwana’s Zila for several years.
The Jazz FM Awards 2013: Meet the Nominees: Robert Glasper – Cutting Edge Award for Jazz Innovation
Grammy nominated Robert Glasper has long kept one foot planted firmly in jazz and the other in hip-hop and R&B. He’s worked extensively with Q-Tip, playing keyboards on the rapper’s 2008 album The Renaissance and co-writing the album single “Life Is Better” which featured his label mate Norah Jones. Glasper also serves as the music director in Yasiin Bey’s touring band, and has toured with the multi-platinum R&B singer Maxwell. The Los Angeles Times once wrote that “it’s a short list of jazz pianists who have the wherewithal to drop a J Dilla reference into a Thelonious Monk cover, but not many jazz pianists are Robert Glasper,” adding that “he’s equally comfortable in the worlds of hip-hop and jazz,” and praising the organic way in which he “builds a bridge between his two musical touchstones.” Glasper drove that point home with his last album, 2009’s Double-Booked, which was split neatly in half. The first part featured his acoustic Trio, which had gathered a great deal of acclaim in the jazz world and beyond over the course of two previous Blue Note albums. The second part featured his electric Experiment band and hinted at things to come, even earning the keyboardist his first GRAMMY nomination for “All Matter,” a collaboration with the singer Bilal that was among the contenders in the Best Urban/Alternative Performance category in 2010. Reflecting back, Glasper is rightly proud of Black Radio, but also humbled and grateful for the outpouring of support and talent that it took to bring the album into being. “Everyone just said yes, period, we’ll do it. It was smoother than I ever thought it would be to get all these great, amazing artists to come together and do this project.”
The Jazz FM Awards 2013: Meet the Nominees: Kurt Elling – nominated for International Jazz Artist
Grammy Award winner Kurt Elling is among the world’s foremost jazz vocalists. He has won every DownBeat Critics Poll for the last thirteen years and has been named “Male Singer of the Year” by the Jazz Journalists Association eight times in that same span. Every one of Elling’s nine albums has been nominated for a Grammy. Elling’s rich baritone spans four octaves and features both astonishing technical mastery and emotional depth. His repertoire includes original compositions and modern interpretations of standards, all of which are springboards for inspired improvisation, scatting, spoken word, and poetry. The New York Times declared, “Elling is the standout male vocalist of our time,” while the Washington Post added, “Since the mid-1990s, no singer in jazz has been as daring, dynamic or interesting as Kurt Elling. With his soaring vocal flights, his edgy lyrics and sense of being on a musical mission, he has come to embody the creative spirit in jazz.” Elling was the Artist-in-Residence for the Singapore and Monterey Jazz Festivals. He has also written multi-disciplinary works for The Steppenwolf Theatre and the City of Chicago. The Obama Administration’s first state dinner featured Elling in a command performance. Kurt Elling has toured vigorously throughout his career, thrilling audiences throughout the world and collaborating with the world’s finest orchestras.
The Jazz FM Awards 2013: Meet the Nominees: Sonny Rollins – nominated for International Jazz Artist
New York born Theodore Walter “Sonny” Rollins has had a big reputation from the start. With influences like Coleman Hawkins, Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong, Sonny started playing the saxophone at a young age. In the early fifties, he established a reputation first among musicians, then the public, as the most brash and creative young tenor on the scene. From New York to Chicago, “Newk” had soared in the music industry. His many awards are endless. In 2006, he was inducted into the Academy of Achievement, – and gave a solo performance – at the International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. The event was hosted by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and attended by world leaders as well as distinguished figures in the arts and sciences. Rollins was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class, in November 2009. The award is one of Austria’s highest honours, given to leading international figures for distinguished achievements. The only other American artists who have received this recognition are Frank Sinatra and Jessye Norman. In 2010 on the eve of his 80th birthday, Sonny Rollins was one of 229 leaders in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts, business, and public affairs who have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In August 2010, Rollins was named the Edward MacDowell Medallist, the first jazz composer to be so honoured. The Medal has been awarded annually since 1960 to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to his or her field. Yet another major award was bestowed on Rollins on March 2, 2011, when he received the Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in a White House ceremony. Rollins accepted the award, the nation’s highest honour for artistic excellence, “on behalf of the gods of our music.” Since 2006, Rollins has been releasing his music on his own label, Doxy Records and continues to make musical history.
The Jazz FM Awards 2013: Meet the Nominees: Brad Mehldau – nominated for International Jazz Artist
Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau has recorded and performed extensively since the early 1990s. Mehldau’s most consistent output over the years has taken place in the trio format. Starting in 1996, his group released a series of five records on Warner Bros. entitled The Art of the Trio (recently re-packaged and re-released as a box set by Nonesuch in late 2011). Mehldau has performed around the world at a steady pace since the mid-1990s, with his trio and as a solo pianist. His performances convey a wide range of expression. Mehldau was appointed as curator of an annual four-concert jazz series at London’s prestigious Wigmore Hall during its 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons, with Mehldau appearing in at least two of the four annual concerts. In late January 2010, Carnegie Hall announced the 2010-11 season-long residency by Mehldau as holder of the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall—the first jazz artist to hold this position since it was established in 1995. Previous holders include Louis Andriessen (2009–2010), Elliott Carter (2008–2009), and John Adams (2003–2007).
The Jazz FM Awards 2013: And the Judges are…As you’d expect, competition for the inaugural Jazz FM Awards is fierce. 34 nominees were carefully chosen by a panel of experts.
For the final judging process, we’ve taken care to carefully select and balance the panel to ensure as robust and transparent a process as possible, and judges cannot vote for artists or nominations in which they have a professional interest .
Meet the Judges:
John Cumming (Serious)
Tony Dudley Evans (Artistic Adviser to Jazzlines)
Simon Cooke (Ronnie’s)
Jon Newey (Jazzwise)
Mike Vitti (Jazz FM)
Chris Phillips (Jazz FM)
Alex Webb
John Cumming is one of the directors of Serious and the London Jazz Festival. He has been programming festivals and tours since the 1970s, stretching back to the Bracknell Jazz Festival, and the first UK performances of Gil Evans in 1978. As a Serious producer he is responsible for concerts and tours throughout the UK. He is an associate Producer at the Barbican, and has received awards for Services to Jazz by the BBC and at the 2012 Parliamentary Jazz Awards.
Tony Dudley-Evans is Jazz Adviser to Town Hall/Symphony Hall and runs the Jazzlines programme with Mary Wakelam Sloan. As well as being Jazz Adviser, he is also Artistic Adviser to the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. He won the BBC Award for Contribution to Jazz in 2005.
Simon Cooke has racked up over 30 years in the music business. With experience ranging from night club management via rock star merchandising to jazz booker. Ex Director of Jazz FM, and co-founder of Hed Kandi Records, Simon has now been Managing Director of Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club since 2008.
Jon Newey is the editor and publisher of Jazzwise magazine. As editor and publisher, he was awarded Jazz Journalist of the Year at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards in 2006 and again in 2012. As a former professional touring and recording musician, Jon has now been working full time in the jazz and rock music press business for over 35 years.
Mike Vitti has been working full-time in radio since 1989 as the Programme Controller at Jazz FM as well as the presenter of Funky Sensation. ‘An unsuccessful drummer/percussionist’ as he says, Mike realised very early on there was more chance of him playing records rather than making them for a living so began his DJ career in Mallorca. Mike still DJs and can be seen playing around the country most weekends.
Chris Phillips has been a steady name on the London airways for 27 years playing Soul, R’n’B, hip-hop and jazz. He became one of the crew on Gilles Peterson’s BBC Radio London show in the mid-’80s. In 1988, Chris was broadcasting on DevonAir and Orchard FM in the West Country presenting everything from travel news to specialist show. He has previously worked with Kiss 100 and is a huge hands-on football fan, He continues to announce at Wimbledon on match days.
Currently a university lecturer in music and events management, Alex Webb has worked at the BBC World Service, BBC News Online and BBC Radio 3. He is also an acclaimed songwriter, musician, and political journalist for Alastair Stewart’s Sunday Programme on GMTV. Since the 1980s, Webb has played with numerous jazz, pop and reggae groups including Manchester’s Carmel and Harlem Spirit, as well as collaborating with many musicians and vocalists including Alexia Gardner.