Another Great Day

[brownie]

From AP

A great day for the jazz artists as Jazz Masters are honored

  NEW YORK (AP) _ Pianist Hank Jones remembers well how almost 45 years ago he posed for an Esquire magazine cover shot with dozens of jazz legends crowding the front steps of a Harlem tenement.

On Friday, Jones more than 20 other jazz greats crowded a spiral staircase in a luxury penthouse suite at the New York Hilton for a photo portrait. The photo shoot preceded a luncheon organized by the National Endowment for the Arts for past and present recipients of its Jazz Masters Awards.

There were many embraces and shared reminiscences among musicians whose touring schedules often keep them apart.

"It's a very happy, warm feeling because we lose people every year," said the 85-year-old Jones, who had a chance to greet fellow pianists Dave Brubeck, Cecil Taylor, Horace Silver, Randy Weston and Billy Taylor. "It's good to see all the people you've known for years and don't get a chance to see every year."

The photo shoot had special meaning for Jones, Silver and saxophonist Benny Golson, who were also in Art Kane's historic 1958 "A Great Day in Harlem" photo that included many departed jazz legends, including Count Basie, Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus.

For Jones, the contrast between the two photo shoots is a welcome sign of the greater respect now being shown to jazz artists."I think there's a lot more awareness and recognition of the accomplishments of the so-called jazz masters ... than there was back in those days," said Jones.

That's what the NEA's new Chairman Dana Gioia had in mind when he expanded the Jazz Masters program, established in 1982, this year by establishing six award categories, boosting the cash award for each recipient to $25,000, and sponsoring a 50-state Jazz Masters concert tour that begins in April featuring a variety of artists.

This year's winners were singer Nancy Wilson, guitarist Jim Hall, pianist Herbie Hancock, drummer Chico Hamilton, writer Nat Hentoff and the late arranger-composer Luther Henderson.

"Jazz is one of the greatest American art forms ... but it's become marginalized in our culture," said Gioia. "We're really here to celebrate jazz not as an art of the past but as one of the dynamic art forms of the present."

The luncheon preceded an evening awards ceremony and concert organized as part of the International Association for Jazz Education annual conference.

[kenny weir]

I've just found the pic on our (newspaper) wire files. I'll see if I kind a version on the net I can post. The version I've found just lists the names without saying who is who in the photo, 'tho it's fun trying to work them out.