She was ready to run the NEA jazz awards, then …
Terri Lyne Carrington went from being musical director for the event to one of the honorees
Under normal circumstances serving as music director for the National Endowment for the Arts’ annual Jazz Masters Tribute Concert is a delicate assignment, requiring consummate skills on and off the bandstand.
Drummer, producer and composer Terri Lyne Carrington proved to be an ideal choice for the job, gracefully pivoting to a virtual production when the pandemic forced the postponement of last year’s event, which was presented online Aug. 20 by SFJazz and the NEA.
Despite a disparate cast of honorees receiving the nation’s highest jazz award, the musical performances were concise and welldesigned to evoke the artists’ contributions and musical personalities. Carrington was ready and eager to reprise her musical director’s role for this year’s celebration, which premieres 5 p.m. today on arts.gov and sfjazz.org, but she ran into a snag.
When she heard from the NEA last October, “I thought they were calling about next year’s show and instead I was quite shocked, pleasantly,” Carrington said.
Rather than getting rehired to direct the musical tribute, she ended up being one of its honorees. She joins the illustrious cast of 2021 NEA Jazz Masters, along with drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath and composer, alto saxophonist and flutist Henry Threadgill. Historian, broadcaster and Grammy Award-winning record producer Phil Schaap is the recipient of the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz
Advocacy.
Carrington reluctantly agreed that she couldn’t direct a show performed partly in her honor. Alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón, a founding member of the SFJazz Collective, took over musical directing duties for an event that features vocalist and NEA Jazz Master Dee Dee Bridgewater and Bay Area actor Delroy Lindo as co-hosts and remarks by second gentleman and noted jazz fan Doug Emhoff. Performers include Wynton and Jason Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Obed Calvaire, Avishai Cohen, Joe Lovano, Pedrito Martinez and many more.
Like last year, SFJazz is putting an organizational stamp on the event by featuring the SFJazz High School All-Stars accompanying Bridgewater.
“People hear that a high school ensemble will be backing an NEA Jazz Master and they’re dubious at first, but last year they hit it out of the park,” said SFJazz founder and
executive artistic director Randall Kline. “Our goal is to make it as meaningful as possible for the Masters.”
At 56, Carrington is the third youngest individual ever selected for the lifetime achievement honor. Sonny Rollins was 52 in 1983 when he was part of the second group of musicians named NEA Jazz Masters, and Ornette Coleman was 54 the following year when he was inducted. In the mid-1980s both men had been bona fide jazz legends for some three decades, and went on to contribute well into the 21st century.
Carrington’s career has evolved quite differently. A prodigy who started performing with leading improvisers as a tween, she spent much of her time as a first-call side musician for a succession of jazz greats.
In the late 1980s, she became a ubiquitous presence on television as house drummer for “The Arsenio Hall Show” and the latenight show “Vibe.” It wasn’t until 2002 that she started concentrating on producing and recording her own music, projects that have garnered three Grammy Awards. She’s also become a leading advocate for women in jazz as the founding artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender
Justice.
“I am 55, and I feel like I’m just getting started in some ways,” she said. “My interests have always been really open thanks to my mentor, Jack DeJohnette. This kicks me into higher gear. It adds a level of responsibility. You want to live up these accolades and expectations.”
For fellow drummer Tootie Heath, 85, the award is the capstone of an extraordinary career. After making his recording debut on tenor saxophonist John Coltrane’s first solo record in 1957, he supplied supple and persuasively swinging support on a series of classic albums by the likes of vocalist Nina Simone, guitarist Wes Montgomery, tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, and his older brother, the late saxophonist and NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Heath. He’s been a mainstay at the Stanford Jazz Workshop in recent years.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Henry Threadgill, 77, hasn’t performed much in California, but he has some deep Bay Area ties. His daughter, New York vocalist Pyeng Threadgill, spent several productive years living in Berkeley in the mid-2000s, and he’s in the midst of composing music for a pandemic-delayed immersive
multimedia collaboration with San Francisco choreographer Hope Mohr and visual artist Danae Mattes.
Coming up on Chicago’s vibrant mid-1960s arts scene, Threadgill helped found the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a forward-thinking collective that embraced a vast continuum of Black music. He’s been a creative force ever since as a dauntingly prolific composer and bandleader who’s profoundly influenced other composers inside and outside of jazz.
“Listening to music as a young person, the people who struck me were all originals,” he said. “In every genre. So when I became interested in trying to play jazz, it was the same thing. I always said to myself, I’m not going to outplay Coleman Hawkins. I’m not going to out-arrange Gil Evans. When I got out of the service in 1969 I decided I’m not going to New York to be a sideman, I’m going to take a band and build bridges.”
He’s been in the vanguard ever since, and accepting another prestigious award offers only a brief pause before he gets back to composing.