DIANNE REEVES
Lifetime Achievement Award
NEA Jazz Master, Vocalist

Five-time Grammy winner DIANNE REEVES is the pre-eminent jazz vocalist in the world. As a result of her breathtaking virtuosity, improvisational prowess, and unique jazz and R&B stylings, Reeves received the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance for three consecutive recordings – a Grammy first in any vocal category.

Featured in George Clooney’s six-time Academy Award nominated Good Night, and Good Luck, Reeves won the Best Jazz Vocal Grammy for the film's soundtrack. 

Reeves has recorded and performed with Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. She has also recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim and was a featured soloist with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Reeves was the first Creative Chair for Jazz for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the first vocalist to ever perform at the famed Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Reeves worked with legendary producer Arif Mardin (Norah Jones, Aretha Franklin) on the Grammy winning A Little Moonlight, an intimate collection of standards featuring her touring trio. When Reeves’ holiday collection Christmas Time is Here was released, Ben Ratliff of The New York Times raved, “Ms. Reeves, a jazz singer of frequently astonishing skill, takes the assignment seriously; this is one of the best jazz Christmas CD's I've heard.”

In recent years Reeves has toured the world in a variety of contexts including “Sing the Truth,” a musical celebration of Nina Simone which also featured Lizz Wright and Angelique Kidjo. She performed at the White House on multiple occasions including President Obama's State Dinner for the President of China as well as the Governors’ Ball. 

Reeves’ most recent release Beautiful Life, features Gregory Porter, Robert Glasper, Lalah Hathaway and Esperanza Spalding. Produced by Terri Lyne Carrington, Beautiful Life won the 2015 Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. Reeves is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Berklee College of Music and the Juilliard School.  In 2018 the National Endowment for the Arts designated Reeves a Jazz Master — the highest honor the United States bestows on jazz artists. 

REGGIE WORKMAN
Lifetime Achievement Award
NEA Jazz Master, Bassist

Reginald “Reggie” Workman (born June 26, 1937 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is recognized as one of the most technically gifted American avant-garde jazz and hard bop double bassists in history. He is a teacher, composer, and jazz advocate whose style ranges from Bop, Post Bop and beyond.

Workman, a “Sound Scientist” is a 2020 recipient for the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship Award, the nation’s highest honor in jazz.

In 1961, Workman joined the John Coltrane Quartet, replacing Steve Davis. He was present for the saxophonist's Live at the Village Vanguard sessions, and also recorded with a second bassist (Art Davis) on the 1961 albums, Olé Coltrane and Africa/Brass. Workman recorded frequently through the 1960s and performed with such icons as Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Eric Dolphy, Gigi Gryce, Booker Little, Roy Haynes, Wayne Shorter, Red Garland, James Moody, Abbey Lincoln, Alice Coltrane, Jeri Allen, Marilyn Crispell, Jeanne Lee, Booker Ervin, Horace Silver, Benny Golson, Cedar Walton, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Curtis Fuller, Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, Herbie Mann, Archie Shepp, Clifford Jordan, Bobby Hutcherson, Sonny Fortune, Billy Harper, and David Murray. Workman, with pianist Tommy Flanagan and drummer Joe Chambers formed The Super Jazz Trio in 1978.

In the 1980s, he was the founding member of “Great Friends” and began leading his own groups: Top Shelf, and The Reggie Workman Ensemble. 

Workman co-founded the historic Collective Black Artists and was Musical Director of the New Muse Community Museum (Brooklyn, NY). In the 1970s, he created the “Top Shelf” quartet. In 1978 he formed a Super Trio, with pianist Tommy Flanagan and drummer Joe Chambers. In 1983 he co-created the “On Time Jazz Series” and produced at the Village Gate. In 1985 he created Trio Transitions with Freddie Waits and Mulgrew Miller. In 1998 he created Trio Three with Oliver Lake and Andrew Cyrille. In 1990 he created the Reggie Workman Ensemble with John Purcell, Jeanne Lee, Marilyn Crispell, Gerry Hemingway, and Don Byron and Jason Hwang. He created Ashanti’s Message (septet), and ”Brew” as well as “Groove Ship.” In 1998, Reggie Workman inaugurated The Montclair Academy of Dance & Laboratory of Music (for students from ages three to eighteen).

In recognition of Reggie Workman's national and international performances and recordings spanning over 40 years, he was named a Living Legend by the African-American Historical and Cultural Museum in his hometown of Philadelphia; he is also a recipient of the Eubie Blake Award. Workman's additional awards include Meet the Composer, MidAtlantic, NYFA Opportunity Grant and Doris Duke Impact Award 2015. His community work includes the East, New Muse, LAI, Co-Founder of MADLOM, African American Legacy Project, AALP Community, and Youth Workshops.

Reggie Workman, in tandem with choreographer Maya Milenovic Workman, has been awarded a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition, the organization announced on April 9, 2020.

On August 20th, 2020 The National Endowment for the Arts, in collaboration with SFJAZZ, honored 2020 NEA Jazz Masters Bobby McFerrin, Roscoe Mitchell, Reggie Workman, and Dorthaan Kirk—who is the recipient of the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy— with the nation’s highest honor in jazz.

TANIA LEÓN
Contribution To The Arts Award
Composer, conductor, educator

Tania León (b. Havana, Cuba) is highly regarded as a composer, conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations. Her orchestral work Stride, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music. In 2022, she was named a recipient of the 45th Annual Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime artistic achievements. In 2023, she was awarded the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition from Northwestern University. Most recently, León became the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s next Composer-in-Residence—a post she will hold for two seasons, beginning in September 2023. She will also hold Carnegie Hall’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair for its 2023-2024 season.

Recent premieres include works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, NDR Symphony Orchestra, Grossman Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Modern Ensemble, Jennifer Koh’s project Alone Together, and The Curtis Institute. Appearances as guest conductor include Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille, Gewandhausorchester, Orquesta Sinfónica de Guanajuato, and Orquesta Sinfónica de Cuba, among others. Upcoming commissions feature a work for the League of American Orchestras, and a work for Claire Chase, flute, and The Crossing Choir with text by Rita Dove.

A founding member and first Music Director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, León instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series, co-founded the American Composers Orchestra’s Sonidos de las Américas Festivals, was New Music Advisor to the New York Philharmonic, and is the founder/Artistic Director of Composers Now, a presenting, commissioning and advocacy organization for living composers.

Honors include the New York Governor’s Lifetime Achievement, inductions into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and fellowship awards from ASCAP Victor Herbert Award and The Koussevitzky Music and Guggenheim Foundations, among others. She also received a proclamation for Composers Now by New York City Mayor, and the MadWoman Festival Award in Music (Spain).

León has received Honorary Doctorate Degrees from Colgate University, Oberlin, SUNY Purchase College, and The Curtis Institute of Music, and served as U.S. Artistic Ambassador of American Culture in Madrid, Spain. A CUNY Professor Emerita, she was awarded a 2018 United States Artists Fellowship, Chamber Music America’s 2022 National Service Award, and Harvard University’s 2022 Luise Vosgerchian Teaching Award. In 2023, Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library acquired Tania’s León’s archive.

DAN MORGENSTERN
Contribution To The Arts Award
NEA JAZZ MASTER, Jazz Historian, Archivist, Author, Editor, Educator

Dan Morgenstern is a jazz historian and archivist, author, editor, and educator who has been active in the jazz field since 1958, and the recipient of the 2007 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy. The Institute of Jazz Studies is the largest collection of jazz-related materials anywhere.

Born in Germany and reared in Austria and Denmark, Morgenstern came to the United States in 1947. He was chief editor of DownBeat from 1967 to 1973, and served as New York editor from 1964; prior to that time he edited the periodicals Metronome and Jazz. Morgenstern is co-editor of the Annual Review Of Jazz Studies and the monograph series Studies In Jazz, published jointly by the IJS and Scarecrow Press, and author of Jazz People. He has been jazz critic for the New York Post, record reviewer for the Chicago Sun Times, and New York correspondent and columnist for England's Jazz Journal and Japan's Swing Journal. He has contributed to reference works including the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Dictionary of American Music, African-American Almanac, and Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year; and to such anthologies as Reading Jazz, Setting The Tempo, The Louis Armstrong Companion, The Duke Ellington Reader, The Miles Davis Companion, and The Lester Young Reader.

Morgenstern has taught jazz history at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Brooklyn College (where he was also a visiting professor at the Institute for Studies in American Music), New York University, and the Schweitzer Institute of Music in Idaho. He served on the faculties of the Institutes in Jazz Criticism, jointly sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and the Music Critics Association, and is on the faculty of the Masters Program in Jazz History and Research at Rutgers University.

Morgenstern is a former vice president and trustee of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences; was a co-founder of the Jazz Institute of Chicago; served on the boards of the New York Jazz Museum and the American Jazz Orchestra; and is a director of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation and the Mary Lou Williams Foundation. He has been a member of Denmark's International JAZZPAR Prize Committee since its inception in 1989.

A prolific annotator of record albums, Morgenstern has won seven Grammy Awards for Best Album Notes (1973, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1991, 1995, and 2006). He received ASCAP's Deems Taylor Award for Jazz People in 1977 and in 2005 for Living with Jazz.