This week’s show will focus on winners of MacArthur Foundation fellowships in Music Composition and Performance. Of the fellows in this category since 1988, about half, maybe even slightly more, have been jazz musicians or from closely related genres of gospel, blues, voice, and Americana. A couple-few years ago, while substituting for Rusty Hassan on his Thursday, Late Night Jazz program, I did a MacArthur fellows program.
MacArthur Fellowships
Often, erroneously referred to as “Genius Awards” MacArthur fellowship actually award creative potential in various fields, including Music Composition and Performance. While I had hoped to delve further into the fellowships, given the day and hour, I will simply refer loyal listeners to the MacArthur Foundation website, http://www.macfound.org.
When the 2019 awards were announced a month or so ago, they included jazz guitarist Mary Halvorson. That week, we played a couple-few cuts from her discography. More recently, we have played music by Jason Moran, Regina Carter and a couple other fellows. Tomorrow, we will survey most of the awardees, not necessarily in chronological order. However, the first winners, from 1988, were pianist and composer Ran Blake and drummer Max Roach, followed by pianist Cecil Taylor in 1991. We will play music from each of them.
Please tune in to hear from this most talented pool of creative jazz musicians.
