NEA Announces $250,000 in 2011 NEA Jazz Masters Live Grants

NEA chair Rocco Landesman announced yesterday that 15 not-for-profit organizations will receive grants totaling $250,000 to bring outstanding jazz musicians, writers, producers, and scholars to communities across the nation in 2011 through NEA Jazz Masters Live.

In cooperation with Arts Midwest, NEA Jazz Masters Live grants support performance and educational activities featuring NEA Jazz Masters, recipients of the nation's highest honor in jazz. This year's participating masters will include Dave Brubeck, Paquito D'Rivera, Jimmy Heath, and Randy Weston, historians and educators Dan Morgenstern and Gunther Schuller, and festival producer George Avakian.

It was an honor for me to serve on the committee that awarded the 2011 grants, and exciting to see so many people working hard to keep jazz on the ground and in the air from coast to coast.

The organizations chosen for this year's NEA Jazz Masters Live are:

• 92nd Street Y, Young Men's & Women's Hebrew Association (New York, NY)

• Artists' Collective (Hartford, CT)

• Burlington Discover Jazz Festival, Flynn Center for the Performing Arts (Burlington, VT)

• Centrum (Port Townsend, WA)

• Charlie Parker Jazz Festival (New York, NY)

• Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans, LA)

• Global Jazz Institute, Berklee College of Music (Boston, MA)

• KCSM FM Jazz 91 (San Mateo, CA)

• Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival (Moscow, ID)

• Litchfield Jazz Festival (Litchfield, CT)

• Outpost Productions (Albuquerque, NM)

• Portland Jazz Festival (Portland, OR)

• SFJAZZ (San Francisco, CA)

• Tanglewood Jazz Festival, Boston Symphony Orchestra (Boston, MA)

• Tri-C JazzFest (Cleveland, OH)