NEA Jazz Masters bypassing St. Louis?

Ron Carter is going to Kansas City. Kansas City, here he comes.
He will not, however, be standing on the corner of 12th St. and Vine
with a Kansas City woman and a bottle of Kansas City wine.

Over the weekend, the National Endowment for the Arts held a ceremony and concert honoring this year's group of "Jazz Masters," including pianist Chick Corea, singer Tony Bennett, Latin jazz percussionist Ray Barretto, trombonist/composer/arranger Bob Brookmeyer, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, clarinetist Buddy DeFranco and 93-year-old John Levy, the bassist who became the first African-American to work in the music industry as a personal manager.

The musicians join a distinguished group of past honorees (including St. Louis area natives Miles Davis and Clark Terry), and in addition to the honor itself, the Endowment provides each Jazz Master with a one-time fellowship of $25,000.

It's always a good thing to see practitioners of the USA's most significant native art form being honored in public for their contributions to our culture, and all of the Jazz Masters past and present have had distinguished careers.

Reading on in the story linked above, I was even more pleased to learn that the Endowment has initiated a 50-state Jazz Masters on Tour program covering 75 cities. "Cool!" I thought to myself. "With 75 cities in the program, this has got to mean that St. Louis will get at least one of these concerts, right?"

Well, as it turns out, not so much. Finding a list of participating cities and upcoming concerts, I see that the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City got a date from Wayne Shorter last fall as part of the Jazz Masters program, and will also enjoy concerts by Ron Carter this Saturday and Dave Brubeck later in the spring. Columbia's fine "We Always Swing" series is listed as the other Missouri presenter, albeit without any specific concert dates yet.

St. Louis, however, was nowhere to be found, and that raises some questions: Did any St. Louis presenter apply for the funding to present one of these concerts? If so, why wasn't the proposal accepted? And if not, why not? Certainly, we have plenty of suitable venues here. If the NEA received applications from, say, the Sheldon, the TouPAC, or another local presenter to do one of the Jazz Masters shows and turned them down, then I'd say St. Louis is getting the proverbial short end of the stick. On the other hand, if no St. Louis presenters even applied, they deserve criticism for not taking advantage of the opportunity.

The NEA Web site says the organization Arts Midwest is serving as the Endowment's national Tour coordinator, and invites potential collaborators to contact them about Jazz Masters. Here's hoping one or more of our local presenters will at least make the attempt for 2006-07.

On a related note, the Jazz Masters program has also helped spawn a PBS television series called Legends of Jazz, hosted by Ramsey Lewis and set to debut this spring. A sort of pilot/introduction to the series called Legends of Jazz: The Jazz Masters aired last year on a number of PBS stations, including our own KETC Channel 9.

So will the new series be shown here, too? I couldn't find a list of affiliates that will be airing the entire series, and when I checked the KETC Web site, there was no mention of the program there, either. Now. given that the program isn't supposed to his the air untl spring, this isn't necessarily a bad sign. As mentioned above, KETC did air the Legends of Jazz pilot. They ran Ken Burns' Jazz documentary in prime time, and they've certainly showed a marked propensity for musical programming during their recent pledge drives.

But to make sure the televised jazz legends don't bypass the Gateway City the way the NEA's live concert series seems to have done, perhaps a little positive encouragement is in order. So, I'm going to drop a nice, polite note to Channel 9 at letters@ketc.org, telling them how much I'm looking forward to seeing Legends of Jazz. I'll report back here on what sort of response (if any) I receive, but in the meantime, if you'd like to see the Legends of Jazz program air here in St. Louis, I encourage you, dear reader, to write to KETC yourself.