The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation Honors
NEA Jazz Master/Bassist Reggie Workman
with the 2023 Satchmo Award
at the FREE WBGO Jazz for Young People Concert,
Armstrong: Past, Present and Future,
at Flushing Town Hall, Saturday, October 21, 2023, at 11:00 am
New York, NY - October 12, 2023 - The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation (LAEF) will present the world-renowned bassist, composer, bandleader, educator and NEA Jazz Master Reggie Workman with the foundation’s prestigious Satchmo Award for his seven decades of jazz musicianship and education during WBGO’s Kids Jazz Concert Series at Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Blvd., Saturday, October 21, 2023, at 11:00AM.
Admission to the concert is FREE. Adults must be accompanied by a child. Reserve tickets here.
Named after Louis Armstrong’s nickname, the Satchmo Award is a testament to Armstrong’s enduring legacy, celebrating artists who, like him, have dedicated their lives to jazz. Workman is the 13th recipient of this award. Past award winners include Ron Carter, Jimmy Heath, Herb Alpert and Sheila Jordan.
The FREE concert features Reggie’s Workman Current Creation for Armstrong, his six-piece ensemble with pianist David Virelles, drummer Gary Jones, III, alto saxophonist Marvin Carter, rap vocalist J Swiss and tap dance pioneer Savion Glover.
Born in Philadelphia in 1937, he worked in John Coltrane’s band and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the early sixties. Workman is one of the most sought-after bassists in jazz history, recording over 150 albums with many jazz stars including Lee Morgan, Donald Byrd, Wayne Shorter, Yusef Lateef, Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy and Geri Allen. He recorded 11 albums as a leader, including his 2004 release, Witch’s Scream. He leads The Reggie Workman Ensemble, co-leads the group Trio Three with Oliver Lake and Andrew Cyrille, and has performed in a wide variety of musical settings. A professor at The New School College of Performing Arts (COPA), Workman worn a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition, and was named an NEA Jazz Master that same year.
Also featured in concert is the New Orleans tenor/soprano saxophonist Calvin Johnson who leads his group Native Son (named after Richard Wright’s novel) consisting of trumpeter/vocalist Andrew Baham, trombonist Jeffrey Miller, drummer Darrian Douglas, bass drummer Errol Lanier, pianist Andrew McGowan, bassist Nori Naraoka and John Altieri on sousaphone. The scion of a musical family, Johnson is a graduate of the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA) and was a student of the late Edward “Kidd” Jordan. He has performed with Harry Connick, Jr. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Aaron Neville and many other New Orleans musicians. Johnson appeared in the HBO series Treme, and his latest recording is titled Notes of a Native Son.
The concert concludes with a soulful Second Line parade befitting The Crescent City, and of Reggie Workman’s wondrous achievements.
Hailed as one of the most influential and popular musicians in modern music, trumpeter Louis Armstrong (1901-71) rose out of poverty in New Orleans, and became, in the words of music and cultural critic Albert Murray, “the Prometheus of jazz,” as the genre’s first major soloist and vocalist, who invented scat-singing. Growing up in the Crescent City, Armstrong heard music from the Caribbean — especially Cuba — and was greatly influenced by the exceptional Cuban trumpeter Manuel Perez of the Onward Brass Band. In 1930, Armstrong’s recording of the Cuban standard “El Manisero (The Peanut Vendor)” sold a million copies and was a precursor to the birth of modern Latin jazz in the 1940’s by bebop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie, arranger/trumpeter Mario Bauza and percussionist Chano Pozo.
The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, Inc. (LAEF) was founded and funded by Louis and Lucille Armstrong in 1969 to give back to the world “some of the goodness he received.” The mission of the organization is to preserve and promote the cultural legacy of Louis Armstrong by fostering programs, lectures, and other educational events to assist those interested, gifted and talented in the field of music, primarily jazz. Today the Foundation is a major source of funding for programs to expose and educate adults and children in the history of American jazz and has provided solid financial support to institutions across the nation. https://louisarmstrongfoundation.org
WBGO is a non-profit, publicly funded arts and cultural institution, dedicated to the curation, presentation, and preservation of music created out of the African American experience. They are committed to providing their community with independently produced music programming and journalism for the purpose of public enrichment, entertainment and insight. The WBGO Kids Jazz Concert Series brings world-renowned jazz musicians to concert halls and venues throughout New York and New Jersey. These concerts give young listeners the chance to discover the enjoyment of jazz, improvisation, and musical collaboration. https://www.wbgo.org
Flushing Town Hall’s vision is to foster artistic excellence and innovation. They bring audiences together via high-quality arts exposure and experiences through programs in Jazz, classical and world music, theater, dance and spoken word, family and education programs, senior programs, exhibitions and free community events. The multi-disciplinary programming reflects the diversity of the local community, while introducing audiences to new art forms and genres, and providing opportunities for artists to celebrate their traditional arts and create new work. https:flushingtownhall.org
Named after Louis Armstrong’s nickname, the Satchmo Award is a testament to Armstrong’s enduring legacy, celebrating artists who, like him, have dedicated their lives to jazz. Workman is the 13th recipient of this award. Past award winners include Ron Carter, Jimmy Heath, Herb Alpert and Sheila Jordan.
The FREE concert features Reggie’s Workman Current Creation for Armstrong, his six-piece ensemble with pianist David Virelles, drummer Gary Jones, III, alto saxophonist Marvin Carter, rap vocalist J Swiss and tap dance pioneer Savion Glover.
Born in Philadelphia in 1937, he worked in John Coltrane’s band and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the early sixties. Workman is one of the most sought-after bassists in jazz history, recording over 150 albums with many jazz stars including Lee Morgan, Donald Byrd, Wayne Shorter, Yusef Lateef, Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy and Geri Allen. He recorded 11 albums as a leader, including his 2004 release, Witch’s Scream. He leads The Reggie Workman Ensemble, co-leads the group Trio Three with Oliver Lake and Andrew Cyrille, and has performed in a wide variety of musical settings. A professor at The New School College of Performing Arts (COPA), Workman worn a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition, and was named an NEA Jazz Master that same year.
Also featured in concert is the New Orleans tenor/soprano saxophonist Calvin Johnson who leads his group Native Son (named after Richard Wright’s novel) consisting of trumpeter/vocalist Andrew Baham, trombonist Jeffrey Miller, drummer Darrian Douglas, bass drummer Errol Lanier, pianist Andrew McGowan, bassist Nori Naraoka and John Altieri on sousaphone. The scion of a musical family, Johnson is a graduate of the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA) and was a student of the late Edward “Kidd” Jordan. He has performed with Harry Connick, Jr. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Aaron Neville and many other New Orleans musicians. Johnson appeared in the HBO series Treme, and his latest recording is titled Notes of a Native Son.
The concert concludes with a soulful Second Line parade befitting The Crescent City, and of Reggie Workman’s wondrous achievements.
Hailed as one of the most influential and popular musicians in modern music, trumpeter Louis Armstrong (1901-71) rose out of poverty in New Orleans, and became, in the words of music and cultural critic Albert Murray, “the Prometheus of jazz,” as the genre’s first major soloist and vocalist, who invented scat-singing. Growing up in the Crescent City, Armstrong heard music from the Caribbean — especially Cuba — and was greatly influenced by the exceptional Cuban trumpeter Manuel Perez of the Onward Brass Band. In 1930, Armstrong’s recording of the Cuban standard “El Manisero (The Peanut Vendor)” sold a million copies and was a precursor to the birth of modern Latin jazz in the 1940’s by bebop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie, arranger/trumpeter Mario Bauza and percussionist Chano Pozo.
The Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, Inc. (LAEF) was founded and funded by Louis and Lucille Armstrong in 1969 to give back to the world “some of the goodness he received.” The mission of the organization is to preserve and promote the cultural legacy of Louis Armstrong by fostering programs, lectures, and other educational events to assist those interested, gifted and talented in the field of music, primarily jazz. Today the Foundation is a major source of funding for programs to expose and educate adults and children in the history of American jazz and has provided solid financial support to institutions across the nation. https://louisarmstrongfoundation.org
WBGO is a non-profit, publicly funded arts and cultural institution, dedicated to the curation, presentation, and preservation of music created out of the African American experience. They are committed to providing their community with independently produced music programming and journalism for the purpose of public enrichment, entertainment and insight. The WBGO Kids Jazz Concert Series brings world-renowned jazz musicians to concert halls and venues throughout New York and New Jersey. These concerts give young listeners the chance to discover the enjoyment of jazz, improvisation, and musical collaboration. https://www.wbgo.org
Flushing Town Hall’s vision is to foster artistic excellence and innovation. They bring audiences together via high-quality arts exposure and experiences through programs in Jazz, classical and world music, theater, dance and spoken word, family and education programs, senior programs, exhibitions and free community events. The multi-disciplinary programming reflects the diversity of the local community, while introducing audiences to new art forms and genres, and providing opportunities for artists to celebrate their traditional arts and create new work. https:flushingtownhall.org
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