Ornette Coleman & Andrew Hill Win Big in 2007 Jazz Journalists' Awards

Ornette Coleman & Andrew Hill Win Big in 2007 Jazz Journalists’ Awards

Ornette Coleman and the late Andrew Hill were the two big winners of the 2007 Awards of the Jazz Journalists’ Association.

Written By

Frank J. Oteri

Frank J. Oteri is an ASCAP-award winning composer and music journalist. Among his compositions are Already Yesterday or Still Tomorrow for orchestra, the "performance oratorio" MACHUNAS, the 1/4-tone sax quartet Fair and Balanced?, and the 1/6-tone rock band suite Imagined Overtures. His compositions are represented by Black Tea Music. Oteri is the Vice President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and is Composer Advocate at New Music USA where he has been the Editor of its web magazine, NewMusicBox.org, since its founding in 1999.

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Andrew Hill (1931-2007), JJA 2007 Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Award Winner
Photo by Jimmy Katz, courtesy Boosey & Hawkes

Ornette Coleman and the late Andrew Hill were the two big winners of the 2007 Awards of the Jazz Journalists’ Association (JJA), an organization comprising 400 journalists, editors, broadcasters, and photographers working internationally. JJA President Howard Mandel presided over the afternoon awards ceremony which took place on June 28 at the Jazz Standard in New York City.

Ornette Coleman’s independently-released Sound Grammar, which earlier this year made history as the first jazz album ever to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music, was the obvious choice for Album of the Year. Coleman, who is about to embark on a lengthy tour and was unable to attend the ceremony, also received awards for Musician of the Year and Alto Saxophonist of the Year, and his Quartet received the award for Small Ensemble of the Year. Also, John Abbott was awarded Photo of the Year for a photo of Ornette Coleman he took in August 2006. (To see Abbott’s photo along with the other nominations for 2007 JJA Photo of the Year, click here.)

Previous JJA Lifetime Achievement Awardees

1997 Benny Carter
1998 Max Roach
1999 Sonny Rollins
2000 Ornette Coleman
2001 John Lewis
2002 Clark Terry
2003 Cecil Taylor
2004 Dave Brubeck
2005 Hank Jones
2006 Roy Haynes

Previous JJA Composers of the Year

1998 Maria Schneider
1999 Dave Douglas
2000 Andrew Hill
2001 Andrew Hill
2002 Henry Threadgill
2003 Andrew Hill
2004 Maria Schneider
2005 Maria Schneider
2006 Andrew Hill

Andrew Hill (1931-2007), now a five-time recipient of the JJA’s Composer of the Year, also posthumously received Pianist of the Year, and the JJA’s highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement in Jazz award. Hill’s awards were accepted by his widow Joanne Hill and representatives from his publisher Boosey & Hawkes with whom he signed shortly before his death earlier this year. Piianist Frank Kimbrough, a Hill protégé, brought Andrew Hill directly to the audience with riveting solo performances of two Hill compositions from the 1970s, “Clayton Gone” and “Tinkering.”

In addition, Maria Schneider, who has frequently been named Composer of the Year and Arranger of the Year by the JJA, was once again honored with the Arranger of the Year award. Israeli-born, New York-based clarinetist Anat Cohen received the Clarinetist of the Year and Up and Coming Artist of the Year awards, and Sonny Rollins, who earlier this year received the 2007 Polar Prize, received Tenor Saxophonist of the Year. In the Journalism categories, Ashley Kahn’s The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records (W.W. Norton) received Best Book of the Year, and Francis Davis was awarded the Jazz Journalism Lifetime Achievement Award. Legendary jazz record producer Orrin Keepnews, among others, was honored with an “A Team Award,” a discretionary award established by the JJA in 2001 to recognize a unique effort in support of jazz. But perhaps the most memorable event of the afternoon was an impromptu pre-acceptance speech drum solo on the podium microphone by Roy Haynes, last year’s recipient of the Lifetime Achievement in Jazz award and this year’s recipient of Drummer of the Year. Since 1997, the JJA has presented Jazz Awards to notable musicians and journalists each June in New York City. A full list of 2007 award recipients appears below.

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2007 Award Winning Musicians, Labels and Presenters

Lifetime Achievement in Jazz: Andrew Hill
Musician of the Year: Ornette Coleman
Up and Coming Artist of the Year: Anat Cohen
Composer of the Year: Andrew Hill
Arranger of the Year: Maria Schneider
Male Singer of the Year: Kurt Elling
Female Singer of the Year: Roberta Gambarini
Trumpeter of the Year: Dave Douglas
Trombonist of the Year: Wycliffe Gordon
Soprano Saxophonist of the Year: Dave Liebman
Alto Saxophonist of the Year: Ornette Coleman
Tenor Saxophonist of the Year: Sonny Rollins
Baritone Saxophonist of the Year: Gary Smulyan
Clarinetist of the Year: Anat Cohen
Flutist of the Year: Frank Wess
Pianist of the Year: Andrew Hill
Organ/Keyboards of the Year: Joey DeFrancesco
Guitarist of the Year: Pat Metheny
Acoustic Bassist of the Year: Dave Holland
Electric Bassist of the Year: Steve Swallow
Strings Player of the Year: Regina Carter
Mallets Player of the Year: Bobby Hutcherson
Percussionist of the Year: Cyro Baptista
Drummer of the Year: Roy Haynes
Player of the Year of Instruments Rare in Jazz: Scott Robinson, multi-reeds
Small Ensemble of the Year: Ornette Coleman Quartet
Large Ensemble of the Year: Charles Tolliver Big Band

Album of the Year: Ornette Coleman, Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar)
Latin Jazz Album of the Year: Brian Lynch and Eddie Palmieri, Simpatico (ArtistShare)
Reissue of the Year, single CD:
Charles Mingus, Music Written for Monterey 1965 Not Heard; At UCLA 1965 (CME-Sunnyside)
Reissue of the Year, boxed set:
Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane, The Complete 1957 Riverside Recordings (Concord)
Record Label of the Year: ECM
Events Producer of the Year: Patricia Nicholson Parker, Vision Festival

2007 Award Winning Journalists, Broadcasters, Photographers, and Publications

Jazz Journalism Lifetime Achievement Award: Francis Davis
Helen Dance-Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Newspaper, Magazine or Online Writing: Nate Chinen
Best Book About Jazz: Ashley Kahn, The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records (W.W. Norton)
Willis Conover-Marian McPartland Award for Excellence in Jazz Broadcasting: Bob Porter
Lorna Foote-Bob Parent Award for Excellence in Photography: Gene Martin
Best Photo of the Year: John Abbott
Best Periodical Covering Jazz: JazzTimes
Best Website Concentrating on Jazz: AllAboutJazz

“The A Team Awards”

Donald Harrison, Artistic Director, and Bill Taylor, Executive Director
The Tipitina’s Foundation

Leslie Johnson
Founder, The Mississippi Rag

Orrin Keepnews
record producer, journalist and annotator

Bob Koester
Founder, Delmark Records; Proprietor, Chicago’s Jazz Record Mart

Dr. F. King Alexander
Chairman of the Board for KKJZ-FM, L.A.’s 24-hr blues and jazz radio station

Mark Masters
Conductor and President of the American Jazz Institute, Pasadena CA

Jan Perry
Councilwoman, 9th District, Los Angeles CA

Jose Rizo
Radio Host, KCSB-FM’s “Barrio Soul” (1970s) and KKJZ-FM’s “Jazz on the Latin Side” (currently)

Clint Rosemond
Executive Director, The World Stage