The ASCAP Foundation recognized twenty talented young jazz musicians this week, bestowing each of them with the 2021 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award for their original compositions and arrangements.
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The recipients currently reside in the U.S. but hail from across the globe, including India, China and Japan. Each of them receives a cash award and were selected through a national competition by a jury of experts.
The program carries the name of the great trumpeter and ASCAP member Herb Alpert in recognition of The Herb Alpert Foundation’s multi-year financial commitment to the program.
“We are grateful to the Herb Alpert Foundation for their long-standing partnership and financial support for this important program to help nurture the careers of talented young music creators,” said ASCAP Foundation President, Paul Williams. “Every year we look forward to hearing the innovative compositions from our Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award recipients, who are the future of this vital art form. We congratulate and wish them enduring success.”
The 2021 Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award recipients are listed below with their age, current residence and place of origin. If under 18, only the age and state of residence is listed:
Clint Bleil, age 26 of Pittsburgh, PA
Andy Clausen, age 28 of Brooklyn, NY (Seattle, WA)
Stratøs (Eddie Codrington), age 24 of Kalamazoo, MI (Ann Arbor, MI)
Michael Echaniz, age 26 of Oakland, CA (Berkeley, CA)
Eliana Fishbeyn age 25 of New York, NY (Chapel Hill, NC)
Ariel Sha Glassman, age 24 of Denton, TX (Columbus, OH)
Philip Ryan Goss age 28 of Brookline, MA (Evanston, IL)
Jon Hatamiya, age 29 of Sacramento, CA (Davis, CA)
Joseph Herbst, age 25 of Easley, SC
Chase Kuesel, age 27 of Brooklyn, NY (Norwalk, CT)
Aditi Malhotra, age 23 of Boston, MA (New Delhi, India)
Luca Mendoza, age 22 of Los Angeles, CA
Lesley Mok, age 26 of Brooklyn, NY (San Mateo, CA)
Yu Nishiyama, age 26 of Hawthorne, NJ (Yokohama, Japan)
Zach Rich, age 27 of Greeley, CO (Wichita, KS)
Yoko Suzuki age 26 of Yokohama, Japan
Gary (Kaiji) Wang, age 25 of Rochester, NY (Beijing, China)
Alex Weitz age 30 of New York, NY (Tucson, AZ)
Matt Wong, age 22 of New York, NY (San Francisco, CA)
Courtney Wright, age 26 of New York, NY (Woodbridge, VA)
Composers receiving Honorable Mention this year are:
Henry Godfrey age 24 of Jamaica Plain, MA (Silver Spring, MD)
Oliver Mann, age 17 of CA; Daiki Nakajima, age 18 of San Jose, CA
Hunter McKay, age 24 of Boston, MA (York, ME)
Yuma Uesaka, age 30 of Brooklyn, NY (London, UK)
Andrew Watkins Alcocer, age 24 of Rochester, NY (Fresno, CA).
Through a partnership with the Newport Festivals Foundation, one of this year’s Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Awards recipients will be featured by the Newport Jazz Festival.
The ASCAP composer/judges for the 2021 competition were: Ambrose Akinmusire, Wycliffe Gordon and Jihye Lee.
Additional funding for the program is provided by The ASCAP Foundation Bart Howard Fund.
The ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award (the “Award”) is granted annually to encourage talented young jazz composers during the earliest stages of their careers. The Herb Alpert Foundation, a non‐profit, private foundation established in the late 1980s, makes significant annual contributions to a range of programs in the fields of arts, arts education and compassion and well-being. Its funding is directed toward projects in which Herb and Lani Alpert and the Foundation president, Rona Sebastian, play an active role.
