Awards,
Jazz at the Grammys - Winners & Nominees 2024
by Barney Whittaker
Stevie Wonder performs at the 2024 Grammy Awards (Image: Robert Gauthier)
Only a month into 2024 and with awards season well under way, things are hotting up in celebration of the finest recordings to have been released over the past 12 months. It was a spectacular night at the Grammys this weekend, and jazz musicians - no strangers to the glitz and glamour of showbiz pageantry - were well and truly represented by a fine range of artists and performers.
Billy Childs took home 'Best Jazz Instrumental Album' for The Winds of Change, while Meshell Ndegeocello's The Omnichord Real Book clinched the inaugural title of 'Best Alternative Jazz Album'. Big band enthusiasts will be pleased to see a win for the The Count Basie Orchestra in the guise of 'Best Large Jazz Ensemble'. Bandleader Scotty Barnhart remarked on this full circle moment as well as the Count's longevity, remarking, “In 1958, Count Basie won his first Grammy, and sixty six years later, he's still winning."
Indian musicians scored big in the form of percussionist Zakir Hussain, who picked up two respective gongs for his work on As We Speak with Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer, not to mention This Moment along with the rest of his Shakti bandmates.
Hailing from Warwickshire, Barney is a twenty-something musician with a burning passion for sounds that entice as well as grooves that swing. He undertook a BA English Language & Linguistics at King's College London, graduating in 2022. Having promoted jazz and folk artists and performers throughout the West Midlands and the Greater Manchester area, he now sings on Sundays in a church choir, plays double bass to anyone that’ll listen, and occasionally might bring out an Irish reel on the mandolin - but not without warning. He can also speak some French, if you ask nicely. Performing has dragged him from his humble beginnings in cosy local pubs to the prodigious stage of the Royal Albert Hall, and all the way back again. This is his first editorial role and he looks forward, with the help of everyone at Presto Music, to discovering the perfect beat.
