Jazz flutist Alexander Zonjic (pictured) has again been tapped to host the Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards, scheduled for April 7 in Mississauga, Ontario. Zonjic, who hosted last year’s inaugural Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards, has also been nominated for two awards. When not emceeing, he performs 100 concerts a year and hosts the morning show on Detroit’s smooth jazz radio station, 98.7 WVMV-FM.
Keyboardist and composer Bob James will be honored with the George Benson Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s ceremony, which will feature performances by Warren Hill, Steve Oliver, Paul Brown, Carol Welsman, Brian Hughes and Dave Sereny.
Top nominees include Feist, Chris Botti and Michael Buble, who was nominated for three awards including album of the year, original composition of the year and male vocalist of the year. Winners are chosen by both a panel of industry experts and through on-line voting. Fans can cast their ballot at www.canadiansmoothjazzawards.com, and yes, voting is open to the international audience.
Tickets to the ceremony start at $50. For more information, visit the ceremony Web site.
Related Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time