Stanley Crouch

Stanley Crouch, Towering Jazz Critic, Dead At 74

By editor • Sep 16, 2020

Stanley Crouch, the lauded and fiery jazz critic, has died. According to an announcement by his wife, Gloria Nixon-Crouch, Stanley Crouch died at the Calvary Hospital in New York on Wednesday, following nearly a decade of serious health issues.

Watch the 2019 NEA Jazz Masters Tribute Concert, Live From the Kennedy Center

By editor • Apr 15, 2019

The National Endowment for the Arts honors the 2019 NEA Jazz Masters with a tribute concert tonight at 8 p.m.

We'll host a live webcast from the John F. Kennedy Center For the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The concert will be hosted by Jason Moran, with musical direction by Terri Lyne Carrington.

There are four NEA Jazz Masters in the 2019 class: pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim, composer Maria Schneider, critic-historian Stanley Crouch, and pianist and singer-songwriter Bob Dorough, who receives his award posthumously.

Toast the 2019 NEA Jazz Masters, in Take Five

By • Apr 8, 2019
Siimon

The National Endowment for the Arts inducts its 2019 Jazz Masters on April 15.

In advance of the main event — a tribute concert at the Kennedy Center, which we’ll livestream here at WBGO — we’re celebrating the new class of honorees in Take Five.

Nat Hentoff, NEA Jazz Master, dies at 91

By Ang Santos • Jan 9, 2017
Stephen Lovekin / FilmMagic via Getty Images

The jazz world mourns the loss of jazz critic and producer, author and journalist Nat Hentoff.

Nat Hentoff, a legendary voice journalist and critic, as written in his Village Voice obituary, passed in his Manhattan home on Saturday.  His son Nick says by Twitter, “He died surrounded by family listening to Billie Holiday.”

For fifty years Hentoff wrote articles and criticisms for The Village Voice.  He was passionate for politics but arguably more so for jazz music.