These are the finalist nominees for the 2019 JJA Jazz Awards. Nominees in most categories were chosen by the votes of the Professional Journalist Members of the Jazz Journalists Association.
Winners of the 2019 JJA Jazz Awards in all categories will be determined by the votes of JJA Professional Journalist Members; winners will be announced here on jjajazzawards.org in May.
2019 NOMINEES FOR JAZZ MUSIC/RECORDING AWARDS
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN JAZZ
RON CARTER
CHICK COREA
AHMAD JAMAL
HAROLD MABERN
PHAROAH SANDERS
Jazz Musician of the Year
Mary Halvorson
Christian McBride
Cecil McLorin Salvant
Wayne Shorter
Up and Coming Musician of the Year
James Brandon Lewis
Makaya McCraven
Linda May Han Oh
Joel Ross
Christian Sands
Composer of the Year
Satoko Fujii
Myra Melford
Maria Schneider
Wadada Leo Smith
Wayne Shorter
Arranger of the Year
Miho Hazama
Michael Leonhart
Jim McNeely
Maria Schneider
Record of the Year
Sonic Creed Stefon Harris and Blackout (Blue Note)
Vanished Gardens Charles Lloyd and the Marvels with Lucinda Williams (Blue Note)
Universal Beings Makaya McCraven (International Anthem )
The Window Cécile McLorin Salvant (Mack Avenue)
West Side Story Reimagined Bobby Sanabria (Jazzheads)
Emanon Wayne Shorter (Blue Note)
Historical Record of the Year
John Coltrane – Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album (Impulse/Verve)
Miles Davis and John Coltrane, The Final Tour: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 6 (Columbia/Legacy),
Eric Dolphy – Musical Prophet (Resonance)
Record Label of the Year
Blue Note
ECM
HighNote/Savant
Pi Recordings
Resonance
Sunnyside
Male Vocalist of the Year
Kurt Elling
José James
Gregory Porter
Female Vocalist of the Year
Cyrille Aimee
Jazzmeia Horn
Cécile McLorin Salvant
Large Ensemble of the Year
Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band
Darcy James Argue Secret Society
DIVA Jazz Orchestra
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
Maria Schneider Orchestra
Orrin Evans and the Captain Black Big Band
Midsized Ensemble
Fred Hersch Trio
Charles Lloyd and the Marvels
Wayne Shorter Quartet
Thumbscrew
Trumpeter of the Year
Ambrose Akinmusire
Terence Blanchard
Dave Douglas
Ingrid Jensen
Kirk Knuffke
Jeremy Pelt
Wadada Leo Smith
Trombonist of the Year
Michael Dease
Marshall Gilkes
Wycliffe Gordon
Steve Turre
Multi-Reeds Player of the Year
Anthony Braxton
James Carter
Roscoe Mitchell
Scott Robinson
Steve Wilson
Alto Saxophonist of the Year
Steve Coleman
Tia Fuller
Steve Wilson
Miguel Zenón
Tenor Saxophonist of the Year
Chris Potter
Wayne Shorter
Mark Turner
Baritone Saxophonist of the Year
Ronnie Cuber
Lisa Parrott
Scott Robinson
Lauren Sevian
Gary Smulyan
Soprano Saxophonist of the Year
Jane Ira Bloom
Jane Bunnett
Dave Liebman
Wayne Shorter
Flutist of the Year
Jamie Baum
Andrea Brachfeld
Charles Lloyd
Nicole Mitchell
Clarinetist of the Year
Don Byron
Anat Cohen
Eddie Daniels
Ben Goldberg
Ken Peplowski
Guitarist of the Year
Bill Frisell
Mary Halvorson
Julian Lage
Miles Okazaki
John Scofield
Pianist of the Year
Kenny Barron
Fred Hersch
Myra Melford
Christian Sands
Craig Taborn
Keyboardist of the Year
Chick Corea
Joey DeFrancesco
Herbie Hancock
Dr Lonnie Smith
Bassist of the Year
Dave Holland
Christian McBride
Linda May Han Oh
Violinist-Violist-Cellist of the Year
Regina Carter
Tomeka Reid
Jenny Scheinman
Percussionist of the Year
Cyro Baptista
Zakir Hussain
Pedrito Martinez
Mallet Instrumentalist of the Year
Stefan Harris
Joe Locke
Warren Wolf
Traps Drummer of the Year
Brian Blade
Andrew Cyrille
Jack DeJohnette
Eric Harland
Roy Haynes
Antonio Sánchez
Player of the Year of Instruments Rare in Jazz
Greg Leisz (dobro, mandolin, lap steel and pedal steel )
Grégoire Maret(harmonica)
Hendrik Meurkens (harmonica)
Scott Robinson (various)
Brandee Younger (harp)
2019 NOMINEES FOR JAZZ JOURNALISM AWARDS
Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism
Nate Chinen has, since 2017, been director of editorial content at WBGO (responsible for Jazz Night in America, Jazz Night in America, The Checkout and other NPR jazz coverage). For nearly a dozen years a jazz and pop music reviewer for the New York Times, and columnist producing “The Gig” for JazzTimes, he is an 11-time winner of the JJA’s Helen Dance-Robert Palmer Award for excellence in writing during a given year, and winner of the JJA’s Best Book of the Year Award for his work with George Wein on Myself Among Others. Nate has been writing about jazz since 1996, when he began at Philadelphia City Paper; covered jazz for The Village Voice in the early ’00s, and has also been published in DownBeat, Blender and Vibe. His book Playing Changes: Jazz For the New Century was published in 2018.
Eugene Holley, Jr. writes about jazz and culture for DownBeat, Publishers Weekly, Hot House, New Music Box, Chamber Music and Playbill. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, NPR: A Blog Supreme, Vibe, Wax Poetics, and The New York Times Book Review and in the books Writing Music: A Bedford Spotlight Reader, Albert Murray and the Aesthetic Imagination of a Nation, and Best Music Writing: 2010, also as liner notes for many albums. He was the program director of WCLK-FM, Clark-Atlanta University, a freelance arts reporter/producer for NPR and co-produced two radio documentaries, “Dizzy’s Diamonds” and “The Duke Ellington Radio Project.”
Dan Ouellette has been a freelance writer for more than 25 years, published in DownBeat, Billboard, Qwest.TV, the Huffington Post and The Absolute Sound, and is senior editor of ZEALNYC for which he writes the column “Jazz Notes Intel.” He’s the author of Ron Carter: Finding the Right Notes and Bruce Lundvall: Playing By Ear, and has regularly presented public q&a sessions with major jazz artists at the Monterey Jazz Festival and North Sea Jazz Festival.
Ben Ratliff is a journalist and professor, jazz and pop critic for the New York Times (1996 – 2016), with writings in Esquire and a broad range of other publications including the New York Review of Books, NPR, Slate, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, 4Columns, Spin, Lingua Franca, Guardian, Metropolis, Village Voice, Coda, Option, Granta, Bookforum, Jazz Times and Wire. He is author of Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty (2016); The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music (2008); Coltrane: The Story of a Sound (2007, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Jazz: A Critic’s Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings (2002). He was host of the New York Times Popcast from 2012 to 2016. He teaches cultural criticism at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
John Szwed has written the biographies Space Is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra), So What: The Life of Miles Davis, Billie Holiday: The Musician and The Myth, and Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World, and authored Jazz 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Jazz; Crossovers: Essays on Race, Music and Culture; Lovers, and Jazz: An American Story for Jazz at Lincoln Center. He was Louis Armstrong Professor of Jazz, Director of the Center for Jazz Studies, and editor of JazzStudiesOnline.org at Columbia University. He’s written for Epistrophy, The Wire, Jazziz, Pulse, and The Village Voice (1979-2009), and was the music critic for Terry Gross’s, Fresh Air (1980-1982). Szwed is editor of the Jazz Perspectives Book Series, University of Michigan Press, has produced records for Evidence and Mixtery, and was awarded a Grammy in 2005.
Print Periodical/Website of the Year
All About Jazz
DownBeat
Jazziz
JazzTimes
The New York City Jazz Record
Blog of the Year
Jazz Profiles, by Steve Cerra Do The Math, by Ethan Iverson Jazz Wax, by Marc Myers Rifftides, by Doug Ramsey Jazz Lives, by Michael Steinman
Book of the Year About Jazz
Nate Chinen, Playing The Changes: Jazz for the New Century (Pantheon)
Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star: The War Years, 1940-1946 (Little, Brown)
Maxine Gordon, Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon (University of California Press)
Eugene Marlow, Jazz in China: From Dance Hall Music to Individual Freedom of Expression (University Press of Mississippi)
Francesco Martinelli, The History of European Jazz (Equinox)
The Helen Dance – Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing in 2018
Nate Chinen
Ted Gioia
Marc Myers
Ted Panken
Giovanni Russonello
The Marian McPartland-Willis Conover Award for Career Excellence in Broadcasting
Arturo Gomez, KUVO Jazz, Denver CO
Susan Kennedy, “Big Band Hall of Fame,” WMNR-Monroe, CT
Tom Reney, “Jazz a la Mode”, WFCR, New England Public Radio
Awilda Rivera, WBGO Jazz, Newark, 1992-2019 Twitter
The Lona Foote-Bob Parent Award for Career Excellence in Photography
Patrick Hinely
Robert Sutherland-Cohen work samples
Val Wilmer work samples
Album Art of the Year
MATT JODRELL – ECHOES OF HARLEM (NICHOLAS)
Art:
2)
JAMES BRANDON LEWIS/CHAD TAYLOR – RADIANT IMPRINTS (OFF RECORD)
Art:
3)
MAKAYA MCCRAVEN – UNIVERSAL BEINGS (INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM)
Art:
4) 
JAMIE SAFT – SOLO A GENOVA (RARENOISE)
ART:
5)
RAFAL SARNECKI – CLIMBING TREES (OUTSIDE IN MUSIC)
ART:
6
DAVID S. WARE TRIO – THE BALANCE (AUM FIDELITY)
ART:
PHOTO OF THE YEAR
CLICK LINK OR IMAGE TO VIEW FULL SIZE PHOTO AND MORE INFORMATION ABOUT PHOTO
1)
PHOTOGRAPHER: STUART BRININ SUBJECT: DONNY MCCASLIN & JOHN PATITUCCI
2)
PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL JACKSON SUBJECT: KIRK JOSEPH
3)
PHOTOGRAPHER:PATRICK MAREK SUBJECT: JAN KODYM
PHOTOGRAPHER: ADRIANA MATEO SUBJECT: ROY HARGROVE
5
PHOTOGRAPHER: MANOLO NEBOT ROCHERA SUBJECT: RON CARTER
6
Tracce di Jazz 