NEA Announces Its 2021 Jazz Masters

A hard-bop stalwart. An avant-garde original. A ceiling-shattering bandleader. A bebop-obsessive broadcaster. These are some brief descriptors for the incoming class of NEA Jazz Masters, announced this morning by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Those four 2021 inductees — saxophonist, flutist and composer Henry Threadgill; drummers Albert "Tootie" Heath and Terri Lyne Carrington; and radio host and jazz historian Phil Schaap — will each receive $25,000 along with their title. The NEA Jazz Masters fellowship, awarded every year since 1982, is the nation's highest honor reserved for living jazz artists and advocates. Selections are made through a public nomination process, followed by an expert panel review.