Minneapolis musician selected for Doris Duke Artist Award

Minneapolis native, New York-based pianist and composer Craig Taborn among 13 jazz artists to receive 2014 Doris Duke Foundation awards

Earlier this week, The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) announced the first-ever recipients of the Doris Duke Impact Awards and the third group of individuals to receive Doris Duke Artist Awards.

According to the press release, “both awards are part of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards, a special ten-year initiative of the foundation to empower, invest in and celebrate artists by offering flexible, multi-year funding in response to financial challenges that are specific to the performing arts. Doris Duke Artist Award recipients receive $275,000, and Doris Duke Impact Award recipients receive $80,000. Since commencing in April 2012, the program has awarded a total of $18.1 million to artists in the fields of jazz, dance and theater.”

The 2014 jazz related award recipients are:

2014 Doris Duke Artist Awards

• Oliver Lake
• Steve Lehman
• Roscoe Mitchell
• Zeena Parkins
• Craig Taborn
• Randy Weston

2014 Doris Duke Impact Awards

• Muhal Richard Abrams
• Ambrose Akinmusire
• Steve Coleman
• Ben Monder
• Aruán Ortiz
• Matana Roberts
• Jen Shyu

Pianist and composer Craig Taborn is multi-talented in the realms of straight-ahead and free jazz. His techno and electro-acoustic artistry, along with his impressive ability to successfully play the Hammond B3 organ and the acoustic piano, have placed him among some of today’s most brilliant artists to emerge from the world of jazz.

He has collaborated with a variety of diverse bands, and played alongside bandleaders such as James Carter, Dave Holland, Tim Berne, and Vijay Iyer, among others.

Taborn’s awards include CMA Presenting Jazz (2013) and French-American Jazz Exchange grants, and multiple “Best Electric Keyboard” recognition from DownBeat and JazzTimes. His most recent ECM release, Chants, earned wide critical acclaim and appeared on a number of lists featuring top albums for 2013. Currently, Taborn is touring the world with his trio featured on Chants. Learn more about Taborn at www.craigtaborn.com.

Ben Cameron, program director for the arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, said, “One of the great joys for us at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is the annual announcement of Doris Duke Artist Award grantees. This year’s roster is an extraordinary group, representing a wide range of artistic styles, ages, communities and experiences. We’re honored to recognize their singular achievements and their continuing influence on their respective fields, and to offer them this extraordinary commitment of time and money. Furthermore, we are especially happy to announce the first ever class of Doris Duke Impact Award grantees — artists chosen from a larger pool of nominations submitted by previous Doris Duke Artist Award recipients. These Impact Awards make a strong statement about the power these artists will have in shaping the fields of dance, theater and jazz, and represent a new way for us to expand our reach to embrace artists we may not have supported in the past.”

The DDCF press release also states the following:

About the Doris Duke Artist Awards

Each recipient of a Doris Duke Artist Award receives $275,000—including an unrestricted, multi-year cash grant of $225,000, plus as much as $25,000 more in targeted support for audience development and as much as $25,000 more for personal reserves or creative exploration during what are usually retirement years for most Americans. Artists will be able to access their awards over a period of three to five years under a schedule set by each recipient. Creative Capital, DDCF’s primary partner in the Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards, will also offer the awardees the opportunity to participate in professional development activities, financial and legal counseling, and regional gatherings—all designed to help them personalize and maximize the use of their grants.

Ruby Lerner, founding president and executive director of Creative Capital, said, “We’re so excited to welcome these exceptional artists to both the Duke and Creative Capital communities. It will be a privilege for us to share the tools and resources we’ve developed over the past 15 years with this stellar group of artists.”

To qualify for consideration by the review panels, all the Doris Duke Artists must have won grants, prizes or awards on a national level for at least three different projects over the past ten years, with at least one project having received support from a DDCF-funded program. The panel chose the artists based on demonstrated evidence of exceptional creativity, ongoing self-challenge and the continuing potential to make significant contributions to the fields of jazz, contemporary dance and theatre in the future. By the end of the initiative, 100 artists will have been named Doris Duke Artists.

About the Doris Duke Impact Awards

Each recipient of a Doris Duke Impact Award receives $80,000 — including an unrestricted, multi-year cash grant of $60,000, plus as much as $10,000 more in targeted support for audience development and as much as $10,000 more personal reserves or creative exploration during what are usually retirement years for most Americans. Artists will be able to access their awards over a period of two to three years under a schedule set by each recipient. Like the Doris Duke Artists, Doris Duke Impact Award recipients have the opportunity to participate in professional development activities, financial and legal counseling, and regional gatherings through Creative Capital, DDCF’s primary partner in the Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards. By the end of the Awards, 100 artists will have received Doris Duke Impact Awards.

Doris Duke Impact Award recipients were nominated by previous Doris Duke Artist Award recipients. Nominators were required to identify multiple artists who have influenced and are helping to move forward the fields of dance, jazz and/or theater — but may or may not be artists in one of these particular fields. In addition to these criteria, they were encouraged to consider artists, including dancers, actors, and non-composing musicians, who are not eligible for the Doris Duke Artist Awards. A separate anonymous panel of artists then selected artists from this larger nomination pool. By the end of the initiative, 100 artists will have received Doris Duke Impact Awards.

About the Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is granting these awards as part of a larger $50 million, ten-year commitment beyond its already existing funding for the performing arts. The first 21 Doris Duke Artists were announced in April 2012, and to date, 80 artists have been awarded $18,375,000.

By the end of the ten years, the foundation will have offered a total of at least 200 artists greatly expanded freedom to create, through an initiative that makes available the largest allocation of unrestricted cash grants ever given to individuals in contemporary dance, jazz, and theater. Provided to honorees through a rigorous, anonymous process of peer review — no applications are accepted — the grants are not tied to any specific project but are made as investments in the artists’ personal and professional development and future work.

The Doris Duke Artist Awards and the Doris Duke Impact Awards are announced in classes of approximately twenty between 2012 and 2016, and 2014 and 2018, respectively. More information about the Doris Duke Performing Artist Awards is available at www.ddpaa.org.

About the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is to improve the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and child well-being, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke’s properties. The Arts Program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation focuses its support on contemporary dance, jazz and theater artists, and the organizations that nurture, present and produce them. For more information, please visit www.ddcf.org.

Robin James welcomes reader responses at jamesonjazz@spokesman-recorder.com.