This week, a brand new fellowship was introduced that granted twenty jazz musicians of retirement age a present of $100,000 every.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
OK. That is sort of a cool fellowship, just a little bit completely different. Typically you get a fellowship if you’re a scholar and comparatively younger. Typically folks get fellowships to allow them to go off and research mid-career. It is a fellowship for jazz musicians who’re not less than 62 years previous, and 20 of them get $100,000 every. NPR’s Phil Harrell experiences.
PHIL HARRELL, BYLINE: The Andrew W. Mellon Basis got here up with the concept of honoring elder jazz musicians. Elizabeth Alexander is Mellon’s president.
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER: Lots of the of us who’ve been making the music ceaselessly had been in want of help. What wouldn’t it imply to essentially say, we acknowledge your brilliance, and we wish at this level in your lives to have the ability to be as useful as attainable?
JOE PETRUCELLI: The lifetime of a working jazz musician is a precarious one.
HARRELL: That’s Joe Petrucelli. He is the manager director of the Jazz Basis of America, which is administering the fellowships. The group frequently offers help to struggling musicians.
PETRUCELLI: They do not have sufficient insurance coverage. They actually stay gig to gig. And if you encounter a disaster, there’s little or no to fall again on.
HARRELL: That is why the panel made a degree of emphasizing principally unheralded artists.
PETRUCELLI: Who’re the artists who’re so deserving of an honor like this however have by no means acquired something prefer it?
HARRELL: They’re as younger as 62-year-old drummer Shannon Powell and as previous as 94-year-old trumpeter Dizzy Reece.
(SOUNDBITE OF DIZZY REECE’S “I HAD THE CRAZIEST DREAM”)
HARRELL: Petrucelli hears that a whole lot of the recipients need to use the cash to proceed their work.
PETRUCELLI: Artists who’ve composed operas which can be unfinished that can now have a chance to finish them. Musicians who’ve archives of unreleased recordings that they’ve by no means actually been in a position to get round to evaluating and releasing.
HARRELL: Sixty-eight-year-old drummer Herlin Riley says he intends to offer away his hundred thousand.
HERLIN RILEY: I attempt to be a giving and sharing individual. So I am completely happy that I may also help make a distinction in another folks’s lives.
HARRELL: Riley spent his profession conserving the beat for greats like Wynton Marsalis….
(SOUNDBITE OF WYNTON MARSALIS’ “BUGGY RIDE”)
HARRELL: …Additionally George Benson, Ahmad Jamal, Marcus Roberts. It is a formidable record. Riley says the fellowship got here as a whole shock, particularly at this stage of his profession.
RILEY: Oftentimes, it occurs the place you get your accolades after you cross away. It is so good to get your flowers when you can nonetheless scent them.
HARRELL: The plan is to award 30 extra fellowships over the subsequent three years, not less than.
Phil Harrell, NPR Information.
(SOUNDBITE OF WYNTON MARSALIS’ “BUGGY RIDE”)
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