Press Releases

Mellon Jazz 2006 Living Legacy Award Honors Saxophonist and Jazz Innovator Oliver Lake
Award to be Presented Friday, October 13, 2006 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Baltimore, MD– June 29, 2006—Jazz saxophonist Oliver Lake will be honored with the Mellon Jazz 2006 Living Legacy Award in a special ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, October 13, 2006.  The Mellon Jazz 2006 Living Legacy Award is a program of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.  The Award celebration will include a dessert reception, the Award ceremony, and a performance by Mellon Jazz 2005 Living Legacy Awardee Rufus Reid in the Kennedy Center Jazz Club. Funding for this event is generously provided by Mellon Financial Corporation and BET J: Cool Like That.

“One of the ways in which Mellon Jazz renews and sustains the jazz tradition is by acknowledging leaders in this discipline,” said David Kutch, chairman of Mellon Financial Corporation's Mid-Atlantic region. “In honoring Oliver Lake, we are recognizing one of this generation's most eclectic musical talents. His accomplishments as a composer, saxophonist, bandleader and poet are world renowned. Mellon Jazz salutes him for his diverse array of musical styles and disciplines, and for excelling in all of these environments.”

Paxton Baker, Executive Vice President of BET Jazz offered his best wishes saying “Oliver Lake is truly a man for all seasons! His artistic gifts are not bound by genre or form. His remarkable talents as a world saxophonist/musician, poet, painter, and composer is admirable. The world of jazz is better because he chose to be in it. BET J congratulates Mr. Lake, truly a Living Legend. ”

Born in Marianna, Arkansas in 1942, Oliver Lake moved to St. Louis at the age of 2. He began drawing at the age of 13 and soon after began playing cymbals and bass drum in various drum and bugle corps. At 17, he began to take a serious interest in jazz. Lake moved to New York in the mid-70s, working the fertile ground of the downtown loft scene and quickly establishing himself as one of its most adventurous and multi-faceted artists.

Mr. Lake co-founded the Black Artists Group (BAG), along with poets Ajule and Malinke, and musicians Julius Hemphill and Floyd La Flore over 35 years ago and the internationally acclaimed World Saxophone Quartet with Hemphill, Hamiet Bluiett and David Murray in 1977. Mr. Lake’s work has allowed him to tour extensively throughout the U.S. as well as in Europe, Japan, the Middle East, Africa and Australia.

Always a strong proponent of artist self-empowerment and independence, in 1988 Mr. Lake founded Passin' Thru, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit, dedicated to fostering, promoting and advancing the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of jazz, new music and other disciplines in relation to music. Under his artistic direction, Passin' Thru has commissioned new works, sponsored performances by emerging artists, documented works by prominent artists, and has established on-going educational activities not only in its home base of New Jersey and New York, but also in Florida, Minnesota, Arizona and Pennsylvania, along with occasional activities in other locales all over the U.S. The organization also operates Passin' Thru Records, which has recently issued its 12th recording (Dat Love by the Oliver Lake Steel Quartet). In addition to Oliver's albums, ranging from solo to big band, Passin Thru has also issued recordings by the late, legendary multi-reed master Makanda Ken McIntyre, piano great John Hicks and the first recording by Lake's mentor, St. Louis tenor sax giant Freddie Washington.

A recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, Lake is one of the most heavily commissioned composers to emerge from the jazz tradition. He's the most-commissioned composer in the history of the eminently respected organization Meet The Composer, most recently completing a three-year project funded by its New Residencies Program that resulted in six new musical works, a theater piece, three dance pieces and extended educational residencies in New Jersey and Tucson, Arizona; along with the establishment of Common Thread, an annual series of concerts featuring gifted female artists.

Other commissions have been received from the Library of Congress; Rockefeller Foundation; ASCAP; International Association for Jazz Education; Composers Forum; McKim Foundation; Mary Flagler Cary Trust; Lila Wallace Arts Partners Program; Wheeling Symphony; New York New Music Ensemble; and Pulse Percussion Ensemble of New York. Oliver is often specially cited for his numerous endeavors with female artists and performers, to the extent of being called "The Feminist Composer" in an arts course taught at Wesleyan University.

Whether composing major commissioned works for the Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra and the Brooklyn Philharmonic; creating chamber pieces for the Arditti and Flux String Quartets, the Amherst Sax Quartet and the San Francisco Contemporary Players; arranging for pop diva Bjork, rocker Lou Reed and rap group A Tribe Called Quest; collaborating with poets Amiri Baraka and Ntozake Shange, choreographers Ron Brown and Marlies Yearby, Native American vocalist Mary Redhouse, Korean kumongo player Jin Hi Kim, and Chinese bamboo flute player Shuni Tsou; doing unique performances with MacArthur Award recipients, actress/author Anna Deavere Smith and writer/law professor/political commentator Patricia Williams; sharing the stage with hip-hop artist Mos Def and pop star Me'shell Ndegeocello; or leading his own Steel Quartet, Big Band and cooperative ensembles the World Saxophone Quartet and Trio 3; Oliver Lake views it all as parts of the same whole.

Previous Living Legacy Award winners include Rufus Reid, Randy Weston, Keter Betts, Jimmy Heath, Joe Kennedy, Jr., Shirley Scott, Reggie Workman, Dr. Donald Byrd, Larry Ridley, Barry Harris, Robert “Boysie” Lowery, and Clark Terry.  A Millennium Award was conferred on Dr. Billy Taylor in 2000.
 
Please visit our sponsors at www.mellon.com and http://www.bet.com/BETJ/.

This program is made possible through a collaboration with the Kennedy Center Education Department.

To download a jpeg of Oliver Lake, please click here.

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation celebrates and supports the wealth and diversity of the region’s arts resources and works to make those resources widely accessible both in the region and beyond.