The Jazzmann wins 2019 Parliamentary Jazz Award for “Best Media”.

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

The Jazzmann is proud to have been announced as the winner in the Media section at the 2019 Parliamentary Jazz Awards. Details of the winners in all ten categories are attached.

The Jazzmann wins 2019 Parliamentary Jazz Award for “Best Media”.
Monday, December 09, 2019

The Jazzmann is proud to have been announced as the winner in the Media section at the 2019 Parliamentary Jazz Awards. Details of the winners in all ten categories are attached.
The recipients of the 2019 Parliamentary Jazz Awards were announced on Tuesday 3 December 2019 with the ten categories representing the diversity of the UK’s jazz scene.

Organised by the All Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group (APPJAG), and presented at the PizzaExpress Live in Holborn, the awards presenters included British politicians and UK musicians including APPJAG co-chair Kelvin Hopkins and jazz industry figures Jon Newey, Deirdre Cartwright, Danielle White, Steve Crocker, Simon Cooke, Gary Crosby OBE, Kevin Le Gendre and Baroness Coussins.

The Parliamentary Jazz Awards are organised by the All Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group (APPJAG) at the Houses of Parliament in London. The group consists of over a hundred members drawn from across the UK political parties. The awards were the brainchild Bob Blizzard (Waveney MP), a long-time enthusiast of the jazz genre who was concerned that there was a lack of national recognition for the work of jazz performers and venues across the UK.

The winners were:

Jazz Vocalist of the Year: Zoe Gilby

Jazz Instrumentalist of the Year: Josephine Davies

Jazz Album of the Year: Fergus McCreadie’s “Turas”

Jazz Ensemble of the Year: Ezra Collective

Jazz Newcomer of the Year: Xhosa Cole

Jazz Venue of the Year: Watermill Jazz, Dorking

Jazz Media Award: Ian Mann, The Jazz Mann

Jazz Education Award: Nikki Iles

Services to Jazz Award: Dame Cleo Laine

Special APPJAG Award: Henry Lowther

Ian adds;

I am very pleased and proud to have received this Parliamentary Jazz Award and it is very satisfying to see my work receiving national recognition.

I am indebted to many people for helping to make the Jazzmann site a success, particularly my wife Pam for allowing me to indulge my passion for music and jazz in particular, and who has acted as the driver to countless gigs up and down the country. Sometimes I think we clock up nearly as many miles as the musicians.

Thanks to my friend Keith Hall whose own success as a sports journalist helped to get me started on this road and to James Powis and Phil Dunsford, my “technical advisors” who designed the site and continue to administer it, dealing with all the IT issues that a computer illiterate such as myself would otherwise find insurmountable. Without these two guys there would be no Jazzmann.

Thank you to to all the guest contributors who have written articles for the site over the years, particularly Trevor Bannister, Tim Owen, Sean Wilkie, Clive Downs and Tom Gray.

Thank you too to all the photographers who have given permission for me to use their work, particularly Tim Dickeson, John Watson and Zoë White

Thank you to all the publicists, record labels and individual musicians for forwarding CDs for my attention. Sorry, but these days it’s physically impossible to review them all, but the music is still very much appreciated.

Similarly thank you too to all the promoters, venue owners and Festival organisers, locally and nationally, for allowing me to cover your live events.

The Awards Ceremony was a wonderful demonstration of how close a community British jazz is, with the Award winners coming from all over the UK - Scotland, Newcastle and even rural Herefordshire! It’s a community that I’m very proud to have been accepted into and to be a part of.

Congratulations to all the other Award Winners, and my thanks to all those who voted for me during the selection process.

IAN MANN