2013 Golden Ear Awards Recipients

Last month at the Royal Room, Industrial Revelation opened and closed a positively buoyant celebration of recent accomplishments by Seattle’s jazz community. Jim Wilke, host of Jazz Northwest and the nationally syndicated Jazz after Hours radio programs, both on KPLU, emceed the presentation of the Golden Ear Awards for 2013. We congratulate all the nominees in this annual look at the region’s vibrant jazz ecology. Here’s more about this year’s award recipients:

NW Recording of the Year
Eugenie Jones, Black Lace Blue Tears
Vocalist Eugenie Jones, with graceful élan and gratitude, enthusiastically joined Industrial Revelation for a couple of tunes at the awards. Bremerton-resident Jones made her professional debut two years ago. Today, she regularly commutes for gigs around Puget Sound – at the historic Sorrento Hotel, Seattle, Sip Wine Bar & Restaurant, Issaquah, Amici Bistro, Mukilteo. Starting out, she attended Greta Matassa vocal jams at Tula’s and practiced her art in other parts of the scene. She’s been resolute in presenting her music and sharing that discovery with audiences. Her self-produced Black Lace Blue Tears (2013), with Bill Anschell, Clipper Anderson, Mark Ivester and guest Michael Powers, features nine of her original compositions – the sprightly “A Good Day,” audience-engaging shuffle “I Want One,” and groovy “In a Shot of Tequila or Two,” which opens with Jones singing in Spanish, among them.

NW Acoustic Ensemble
Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble
The Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble music is arranged and conducted by Wayne Horvitz, one of the premiere composers in the Northwest. At the ensemble’s core are a rotating bunch of musicians who perform with poignant vocabulary and articulation of tone. The band often features Eric Eagle (drums), Geoff Harper (bass), Ryan Burns (piano), Al Keith, Samantha Boshnack, Chad McCullough (trumpets), Christian Pincock, (valve trombone), David Marriott (trombone), Greg Sinibaldi (baritone sax), Jacob Zimmerman (alto sax), Kate Olson (soprano sax), Beth Fleenor (clarinet) – all under the direction of Horvitz. In May 2013, they traveled to NYC, to the Stone – the East Village nonprofit artist space founded by John Zorn – for a week-long residency. In conjunction with the residency, the ensemble released a limited-edition live Royal Room recording of their performances of Horvitz’s compositions arranged by his musical cues and spontaneous gestures

NW Alternative Group
The Westerlies 
Having taken New York by storm, former Seattle residents Riley Mulherkar, Zubin Hensler (trumpets), Willem de Koch and Andy Clausen (trombones) formed the new-music brass quartet the Westerlies. The group emphasizes original composition and improvisation in conventional chamber music, aiming to create in the ever-narrowing gap between contemporary classical composition, jazz-influenced improvisation and North American folk music. Also nominated for their performance, and as guest performers with Douglas’ quintet, on the Dave Douglas double bill concert, Earshot Jazz Festival, October 12, the Westerlies have astounded audiences, and you, Golden Ear voters, with their pluck and poise on the national and international jazz scene. Check this summer’s Vancouver Jazz Festival schedule for appearances by the quartet

NW Concert of the Year
“Nonaah” by Roscoe Mitchell, Nordstrom Recital Hall, June 7
In a rare appearance, June 7, Nordstrom Recital Hall, Roscoe Mitchell performed his piece “Nonaah” solo, and many Table and Chairs artists engaged with the work in a kind of live mimesis, first by cello quartet, then alto sax quartet, then by Bad Luck duo Chris Icasiano and Neil Welch, then by Jacob Zimmerman’s Lawson tentet. This concert presented one of America’s most important artists and, in the marketing efforts leading up to the performance, went deep into chronicling his influence. Everyone has a Roscoe Mitchell story. You can read many of them at blog.tableandchairsmusic.com, compiled by alto saxophonist Jacob Zimmerman, who studied with Mitchell at Mills College, California. The event also included a pre-concert interview with Mitchell, about his career and the evolution of the renowned piece, with a question-and-answer session with the audience

NW Instrumentalist of the Year
D’Vonne Lewis
Remarkably, the four artists nominated here have made strides in our region’s cultural landscape beyond a jazz niche – an amazing category, with accomplishments abound. Notably among them, Golden Ear recipient drummer D’vonne Lewis has remained one of the most sought after drummers in the recent year. A new dad, with a positive charm, Lewis, in the last year, has celebrated the legacy of his father’s musical influence in the region, in concert at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute, has been on tour with Industrial Revelation and has performed at all manner of jam session and gigs on the scene. That the voted instrumentalist of the year is a drummer, it’s worth remarking, shows that Lewis’ artistic touch, leadership and character are shining, on an instrument perhaps not often regarded as musical

NW Emerging Artist
Jacob Zimmerman
Alto saxophonist Jacob Zimmerman held a monthly repertory session at Egan’s Ballard Jam House in 2013. There, he featured in his quintet, performing faithful renditions of classic bebop from the 40s and 50s. He continued there, and at the Royal Room, with similar projects featuring influential jazz compositions and recordings, from Lennie Tristano tributes to interpretations of music from Disney films. In addition to his monthly at Egan’s and other performances, he played a significant role in producing the Table and Chairs June 7 “Nonaah” concert at Nordstrom Recital Hall and began teaching jazz band III at his alma mater, Garfield High School. Zimmerman studied music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and at Mills College in Oakland. His teachers have included Roscoe Mitchell, Jerry Bergonzi, Joe Morris and Anthony Coleman

NW Vocalist of the Year
Stephanie Porter
Seattle native Stephanie Porter is a longtime figure in the Northwest jazz scene. Porter has worked with over 50 groups as a freelance vocalist and is often spotlighted as a featured or special guest artist in some of the region’s top venues. In 2013, she featured on the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra’s “Great American Songbook V” program with vocalist Primo Kim, and, for a short stint, held a weekly gig and jam at a the erstwhile Wine, Tea, Chocolate in Fremont. She has also performed at numerous festivals and special events across the country and in Canada, France and England. Her latest album, How Deep is the Ocean, is a brilliant showcase of her amazing talent as a vocalist.

­– Jessica Davis

Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame

Bert Wilson
A Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame honor was posthumously awarded to Bert Wilson, one of the region’s most celebrated jazz musicians, and one of the most distinctive saxophonists, anywhere. A longtime resident of Olympia, he passed away on June 6 at Providence St. Peter Hospital after a heart attack. He was 73. In a wheelchair since his childhood, as a result of polio, Wilson won praise from devotees of vanguard jazz more than from those of the mainstream, but he turned his advanced saxophone technique and idiosyncratic abilities, in his discerning way, to produce jazz that was equally expressive whether fierce or sweet, full-on or subtle. Born into a vaudeville family in Evansville, Indiana, in 1939, his grandfather introduced him to the music of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. When Wilson’s family relocated to Chicago, he was placed in the care of a children’s hospital school. There, when Wilson was 12, a fellow student introduced him to the bebop of Charlie Parker and others, which Wilson took to playing on clarinet. That strengthened his diaphragm, on one occasion saving his life from asphyxiation. His narrow escape convinced him that music would be his life.
Years later, after many re-locations in the U.S., in Washington State, he met his eventual wife, Nancy Curtis, a flutist with whom he lived for 30 years until his death. Numerous stand-outs on the Seattle and Puget Sound scenes found him in Olympia, and appeared on his numerous recordings. Northwest jazzers, like those in Wilson’s earlier locations, sought him out for his extraordinary abilities. His reputation steadily grew; he was a saxophonists’ saxophonist, and one whom generations of Northwest jazz musicians embraced for his soaring, optimistic sound and affable company. Indeed, sax players came to Wilson for lessons from around the world. Among well-known recipients of his instruction and inspiration were Ernie Watts and Tower of Power’s Lenny Pickett. Fellow performers along with jazz writers sang Wilson’s praises as a key, albeit too-little-recognized, figure in jazz. He performed often at major Northwest jazz events, including the Earshot Jazz Festival. He had a weekly spot in Olympia with fellow tenor saxophonist Chuck Stentz. He had played his last gig just two days before he died.
– Peter Monaghan

Bill Frisell
World-renowned guitar innovator Bill Frisell creates at the intersections of jazz, country and pop, all processed through his inimitable personal style. The guitarist, now a decade’s long resident of the Northwest, joined the University of Washington’s School of Music in 2013, as an affiliate professor. Conversant in an array of American musical realms, Frisell continues to travel and perform around the world for most of the year, but his time in Seattle will be spent closer to the UW and the movement of modern jazz that’s grown there since Cuong Vu joined the faculty in 2007.

Special Award to Daniel Sheehan in recognition of his tremendous contributions in documenting the Seattle jazz scene:
Seattle-based, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Daniel Sheehan specializes in portrait photography. He’s also a wedding photographer with a subtle story-telling approach, creating award-winning wedding photography. Starting in 2008, during the annual Earshot Jazz Festival, he began to post beautiful live concert photos from Earshot Jazz events, at his blog www.eyeshotjazz.com.
Congratulations again to all the nominees, and thank you, Golden Ear voters, for your record-breaking participation in recognizing and celebrating all of the incredible talent in the Northwest.