Nominees for the 2012 JJA Jazz Awards in 40 categories of excellence in jazz musicianship and jazz journalism will be announced by the Jazz Journalists Association on Friday, April 13. All nominees will be listed here on the JJA Jazz Awards website. Honors in jazz's only independent, international, culture-and-community-wide awards program will be given for work done in calendar year 2011 and include Best of the Year Awards for musicians, presenters, recordings, photos, journalists, publications, blogs and websites. Lifetime Achievement Awards in Music and in Journalism will also be bestowed.
Professional Journalist Members of the JJA will begin voting for the winner in each category on April 14, voting closes on April 29. (There will be an additional round of voting, between May 1 and May 12, to chose the Photo of the Year.) In a change from the JJA's previous practice, this year's winners in various categories will be announced periodically during May and June, with the winners of the Lifetime Achievement awards and several others to be revealed on June 20 at the New York City Awards Party at the Blue Note Jazz Club. Follow @JJAjazzawards on Twitter, or friend JJA Jazz Awards on Facebook to be among the first to be notified of the winners of all the 2012 Awards as they are made public.
The JJA will also begin its first ever Jazz Blogathon on April 13-- Jazz Day as designated by the U.S. Council of Mayors. Bloggers, videographers, photographers and other jazz media makers are expected to contribute to the Blogathan, which aims to show that jazz is alive and well in a wide variety of communities around the world.
This year's JJA Jazz Awards celebrations will have the same focus on community, with "satellite parties" already being planned for June in a number of locales, including Boston; Atlanta; Tucson; Los Angeles; Philadelphia; Saratoga Springs, New York; Tallahassee and Gainesville, Florida; Ottawa, Canada and Auckland, New Zealand. "Jazz Heroes" --local activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz-- will be honored at many of these parties.
