Out everywhere June 13, 2025!

Ask any true jazz fan to draw up a list of the greatest vocalists of the modern era and the name Dee Dee Bridgewater will inevitably appear at the top. Repeat the exercise for contemporary pianists and you’ll just as assuredly see Bill Charlap on the short list.

Draw a line between the two however, and the most dedicated aficionado would have no chance of predicting the outcome. The prospect of a collaboration proved daunting even to Bridgewater and Charlap themselves, who had never worked together prior to their first meeting live on stage in 2019.

“Chemistry happens or it doesn’t happen,” Charlap insists. “And when it happens, it happens – boom! – instantaneously.”

That it happened and continues to happen for this inspired pairing of GRAMMY®-winning jazz masters is reflected in the title of their debut release as a duo. Elemental hints at the profound virtually subatomic level on which these two brilliant artists connect. In a relatively short but fruitful period of time – interrupted but not derailed by the pandemic – they have forged a camaraderie that soars past the chemical to the alchemical.  

“The two of us have discovered a kind of musical melding that is completely inexplicable to the untrained ear,” says Bridgewater. “We’ve become a gentle force of nature, and people are astounded when they encounter it.”

The initial idea for the collaboration was Bridgewater’s, and appropriately for a project that has taken on such a mystical aura, it arrived like a bolt out of the blue. “I hear voices,” the singer explains. “I woke one morning and a voice said, ‘Bill Charlap.’ I was really quite dumbfounded because it seemed like such an unlikely pairing for me.”

But one thing that Bridgewater has learned over the course of her remarkable, nearly six-decade career is to trust in that voice. Her broad-ranging successes speak for themselves: three GRAMMY® Awards, a Tony Award, NEA Jazz Master honors, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and the 2024 Bruce Lundvall Visionary Award, just to name a few of her myriad accolades.

So she took yet another leap of faith along a path riddled by such bold ventures, and set the wheels in motion. However surprised Bridgewater may have been by the concept, Charlap was downright shocked to receive the unexpected call from the duo’s shared booking agent.

“I have always been and continue to be a huge fan of Dee Dee Bridgewater,” the pianist says. “I was delighted at the prospect of us working together, but I assumed she would be guesting with my trio. When I was told no, Dee Dee wants to do this as a duo, all of a sudden a bunch of lights went on.”

Charlap of course is no stranger to working with incredible singers. He won a GRAMMY® Award in 2016 for The Silver Lining: The Songs of Jerome Kern, his acclaimed album with one of the all-time greats, Tony Bennett. He’s also recorded with Barbra Streisand, Diana Krall, Ann Hampton Callaway, Freddy Cole, Carol Sloane, and two beloved albums with his mother, cabaret and jazz singer Sandy Stewart.

The pair scheduled a few exploratory concerts to determine whether they in fact did possess that ever-elusive chemistry. The results were more exhilarating than the two had dared hope.

“My perception and my understanding of Bill changed completely after we got together,” Bridgewater explains. “I knew that he was steeped in the American songbook, but I did not know the degree of his extreme knowledge. I was blown away by Bill’s sensitivity as a pianist, his wealth of knowledge and the references that he can call upon when he’s playing. I mean, he’s an encyclopedia. I have never before in all of my years worked with a musician with whom I could so completely relax and be myself.”

Charlap is quick to return the compliments. “Dee Dee Bridgewater is a giant of a musician,” he says. “A brilliant vocalist, but just as much an actor, just as much a storyteller, just as much a risk taker. All of that is together in equal parts, with each piece stepping out into the follow spot at different moments. That makes her unlike anybody else historically.”

As singular as both musicians are known to be as individuals their pairing is wholly unique, calling to mind nonpareil duos of the past from Ella and Louis to Billie and Prez. Witness the way that Bridgewater’s vocal brushwork at the outset of “Beginning to See the Light” evokes percussive strikes from the piano; or the gravity-defying leaps that the singer takes atop Charlap’s jaunty, percolating lines on “Honeysuckle Rose”. 

Bridgewater and Charlap journey across a vast panorama of emotions throughout Elemental, managing to maintain a simultaneous sense of play and heartbreak – Bridgewater proffers the word “whimsy” to describe the fanciful spirit at the core of this music, evident whether they’re careening through a breathless “Caravan” or basking in the fragile silences of “Here’s That Rainy Day;” twirling hip filigrees around one another on “’S Wonderful” or moanin’ the lowest of the lows on “Love for Sale.”

That all of these feelings can be conjured in such a captivating spirit of spontaneity speaks to the shared experience that these two masters bring to the collaboration. “I always say, ‘The heart knows everything the head knows,’” Charlap says. “But the heart also knows things the head doesn’t know. So trust the heart. Dee Dee knows that – she’s a force of nature, always willing to jump into the deep end of the pool.”

“There’s such a joy that emanates from what we’re doing,” adds Bridgewater. “Every time we perform together is a kind of spiritual release for me. I always know that it’s going to be something special and unique and tremendous and momentous. I’m really happy that we both said yes to this adventure.”

Dee Dee Bridgewater on TKA

Bill Charlap on TKA

The Jazz Journalists Association has announced 46 winners of its 2025 JJA Jazz Awards, the 30th annual celebration of excellence in creation of jazz music and jazz-related media. Professional members of the non-profit JJA – the writers, photographers, broadcasters, videographers, podcasters and bloggers covering jazz and adjacent arts – hail several of the field’s most respected elders in top categories, including:


The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow (Blue Note Records) by tenor saxophonist-flutist Charles Lloyd, 87, in quartet as Record of the Year;

Artemis as Mid-Sized Ensemble of the Year

Cécile McLorin Salvant as Female Vocalist of the Year and Duo of the Year (Cécile McLorin Salvant – Vocals, Sullivan Fortner – Piano)

See all winners and finalists instrumental prowess and achievements in jazz photography, broadcasting, books and visual arts, at JJAJazzAwards.org.

“After 30 years, the JJA Jazz Awards is the longest running independent poll of international critics, ” claimed Howard Mandel, president since 1994 of the JJA, “and JJA members tend to revere artists whose sounds endure. We also hail new voices for what they’re saying now.” He referred to Awards winning trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, guitarist Mary Halvorson, strings player Tomeka Reid (cello), mallet instrumentalist Patricia Brennan and live-stream producer/pianist Emmet Cohen as the established next generation advancing the art form.

Informally founded in 1988 and incorporated in 2004, the JJA currently comprises 250 active members. Winners of the JJA Jazz Awards, launched in 1996, are determined in a two-stage voting process, with initial nominees solicited from members or pre-screened by committees (in the case of books, photograph and album art of the year). Jazz Awards certificates will be presented to winners at events throughout coming months. The JJA’s annual Awards initiatives include recognition of Jazz Heroes, “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz.” The 2025 JJA Jazz Heroes were announced April 1.

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Charles Lloyd on TKA

Cécile McLorin Salvant on TKA

Artemis on TKA

The Long-Time Supporter Of The Performing Arts Community Provides $6.3M In Grants To Support Artists

(May 1, 2025 – New York) Today, May Day, the Doris Duke Foundation (DDF) announced the six recipients of the 2025 Doris Duke Artist Awards – the largest prize in the United States that is dedicated to individual performing artists – and the launch of Creative Labor, Creative Conditions, a campaign and national network celebrating artists as creative laborers that includes $3M in grants towards building the financial and social conditions to help sustain professional artists.

This year’s Doris Duke Artist Awards honorees are:

  • Trajal Harrell: Trajal is an American dancer and choreographer best known for a series entitled Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church. He is considered to be one of the most important choreographers working in contemporary dance today.
  • Raja Feather Kelly: Raja is a Brooklyn-based choreographer known for his surrealist productions. He’s worked on shows like Fairview and A Strange Loop, and he serves as artistic director for The Feath3r Theory and the New Brooklyn Theatre.
  • Aya Ogawa: Aya is an award-winning Brooklyn-based playwright, director, performer and translator. Their work explores cultural identity and the immigrant experience, challenging traditional notions of American aesthetics. They use a collaborative process and incorporate diverse perspectives and languages into their performances.
  • Kassa Overall: Kassa is a Grammy-nominated musician, emcee, singer, producer and drummer who melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap in unmapped directions. He previously released four critically acclaimed projects: I THINK I’M GOODGo Get Ice Cream and Listen to JazzShades of Flu and Shades of Flu 2.
  • Kaneza Schaal: Kaneza Schaal is a New York City–based artist working in theater, opera and film. Her notable work Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now was The Met’s first live performance as an integral part of a major exhibition.
  • Brandee Younger: Brandee is an American harpist who blends classical, jazz, soul and funk influences into her music. In 2022, she became the first Black woman nominated for a Grammy® Award for Best Instrumental Composition and won the 2024 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Jazz Album for Brand New Life.

“The Doris Duke Artist Awards are more than an award—they are an emblem of the role of artists in protecting a free and open society. These artists exemplify our commitment to the essential investments our society must make in sustaining creative labor,” said Sam Gill, CEO of the Doris Duke Foundation.

Each artist is awarded $525,000 in unrestricted funds allocated over seven years and an incentive of up to $25,000 to save for retirement. Including the 2025 recipients, the foundation to date has provided nearly 150 artists with more than $40 million through the Doris Duke Artist Awards program.

Kaneza Schaal, one of the 2025 Doris Duke Artist Award recipients said, “The world is on fire right now—with big changes, fears and dangers, problems. When it comes to the work of imagining new worlds, new answers, new possibilities… we who work in performance—what we make is always a conversation, in a world so desperately in need of conversations, real exchanges. At its best, our work is a model of participatory society. The Doris Duke Foundation’s support of our work, the work of democracy, of art, conversation and community, is an investment in building the world.”

This year, the Doris Duke Foundation intentionally announced the Artist Awards recipients on May Day—a day honoring the struggles and achievements of the international labor movement—to affirm that artists are workers. By celebrating artists as creative laborers, DDF underscores how society thrives when artists have resources, compensation and the support they need to live and work. With a $6.3M investment, DDF is reaffirming its commitment to the performing arts through the national Creative Labor, Creative Conditions campaign, which includes:

  • $1.5M to the United States Artists for their national policy alliance and financial literacy trainings for artists
  • A $1.5M partnership with the Center for Cultural Innovation on a national policy initiative that ensures artists are included in labor protections
  • Arts policy convenings in Washington, D.C. with DCJazz (summer 2025) and in Colorado with Aspen Art Museum as part of their 2025 Investing In Artists As Leaders initiative
  • A growing network of national partners dedicated to advancing equitable wages for artists, growing healthy communities with thriving cultural sectors and creating affordable spaces for performing artists to develop and produce work

United States Artists (USA) and the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI) are nonprofits that help individual artists build sustainable careers and, more broadly, work to improve the social and financial infrastructure that allows artists and other freelancers to be creatively and financially successful in the long term. Through expanded technical assistance, financial services and direct support via USA programs and the National Arts Policy Alliance, DDF is equipping the organization’s member artists with tools to navigate a shifting policy landscape and preserve their long-term financial health.

“The independence and freedom necessary for an artist to roam, to imagine and to create visionary work, can leave those very artists vulnerable to being excluded from the protections and benefits awarded to those in stable and consistent environments of care,” said Judilee Reed, CEO of United States Artists. “As cultural laborers, we want to understand these challenges and create systems to accommodate resources for artists, not just because they’ve created beauty in the world but because this care is inalienable to all people.”

“A healthy democracy needs artists, yet artists are silenced when they struggle financially, are encumbered by debt or are losing housing. Everyone should be freely expressive, yet these kinds of struggles hold back too many people. We are excited to be working together on solutions for unharnessing artists’ potential in ways that benefit everyone in society.” — Angie Kim, President & CEO, Center for Cultural Innovation and Founding Director of its Research to Impact Lab.

The campaign kicks off on May 1 in Times Square with a multidisciplinary performance and large-scale choral activation, alongside partners. In addition to USA and CCI, partners include One Nation, One ProjectCreatives Rebuild NY, and IndieSpace. As part of the effort, DDF will host two additional convenings with cross-sector leaders and artists between May Day and Labor Day in Aspen, Colorado and Washington, DC.

Established in 2012, the Doris Duke Artist Awards aim to create conditions for individual artists so they can thrive. In addition to providing a cash prize, the foundation also gives the award winners support including professional development, financial planning and management services, enhanced networking and performance opportunities. The unrestricted nature of the award allows artists to use the funds for either personal or professional needs and enjoy the freedom to pursue projects of their choosing. In 2023, the foundation doubled the amount of the award to signal the power of sustained support for individual performing artists.

For more information about the Doris Duke Artist Awards, visit ddaa.dorisduke.org.

ABOUT THE DORIS DUKE FOUNDATION
The mission of the Doris Duke Foundation (DDF) is to build a more creative, equitable and sustainable future. The foundation works across three areas: arts & culture, nature and health & well-being. DDF focuses its support to the performing arts on contemporary dance, jazz and theater artists, and the organizations that nurture, present and produce them. The Doris Duke Foundation is one of only two foundations in history to have received the National Medal of the Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, presented by President Barack Obama, in special recognition of DDF’s support of creative expression across the United States and bold commitment to artistic risk, helping artists, musicians, dancers and actors share their talents and enrich the cultural life of the nation.

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Brandee Younger on TKA