Kurt Elling: Jazz Journalists Association Male Singer of the Year!

The Jazz Journalists Association has named Kurt Elling its Male Singer of the Year! The fourteenth annual Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards ceremony was held June 14, 2010 at City Winery in New York.
This is Kurt’s sixth JJA Jazz Award. He previously won in 2000, 2002, 2006, 2007, and 2009.

Other nominees for Male Singer of the Year were Tony Bennett, Andy Bey, Freddy Cole, Giacomo Gates, and Bill Henderson.

The 2010 JJA Jazz Awards ceremony was hosted by Terrance McKnight of New York City’s WQXR-FM. Awards were presented in more than 40 categories of excellence in making and documenting jazz. In addition, new members of an “A Team” of advocates, activists, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz were introduced.

As Howard Mandel, president of the Jazz Journalists Association said,

Somebody ought to stand up for jazz musicians and journalists. Oh, audiences applaud and reader-listeners sometimes compliment the writer, photographer or broadcaster who delivers words, images and the sound of music using whatever medium they happen to employ. But the best jazz musicians and jazz journalists are hardworking, exceptionally creative people who have dug a rich but narrow niche between commercial pop and classically “artistic” culture with slight reward other than their work itself. So they deserve a little extra appreciation—and the Jazz Journalists Association’s Jazz Awards try to do that very thing.

For the first time, the JJA Jazz Awards were streamed live on the Internet, and satellite parties were held in six cities, all celebrating those who make and document jazz at the highest levels of excellence.

Photographs, video of the awards ceremony, and the full list of this year’s winners are all here.

Congratulations to all the winners, and especially to Kurt!