National Endowment for the Arts Statement on the Death of NEA Jazz Master Dan Morgenstern

It is with great sadness that the National Endowment for the Arts acknowledges the passing of jazz historian, archivist, author, editor, and educator Dan Morgenstern, recipient of the 2007 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy, given to those who have made major contributions to the appreciation, knowledge, and advancement of the American jazz art form. From 1976 to 2011, Morgenstern served as director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University—the largest collection of jazz-related materials anywhere.

“It’s a blessing to have been able to make a living and a life involved with something one loves,” Morgenstern said in 2007 on receiving his Jazz Masters award. “[T]he music has never lost its magic; I first got involved as a fan and I still am, of the music, of the wonderful artists who create it (and so many of whom I’ve been lucky to get to know), and of the precious legacy that I’ve been privileged to help collect, preserve, and share. Jazz brings people together; it’s America’s gift to the world.”

Born in Germany and reared in Austria and Denmark, Morgenstern came to the United States in 1947. He was chief editor of DownBeat from 1967 to 1973, and served as New York editor from 1964; prior to that he edited the periodicals Metronome and Jazz. Morgenstern was co-editor of the Annual Review Of Jazz Studies and the monograph series Studies In Jazz, published jointly by the IJS and Scarecrow Press, and author of Jazz People. He was jazz critic for the New York Post, record reviewer for the Chicago Sun Times, and New York correspondent and columnist for England's Jazz Journal and Japan's Swing Journal. He contributed to reference works including the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Dictionary of American Music, African-American Almanac, and Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year; and to such anthologies as Reading Jazz, Setting The Tempo, The Louis Armstrong Companion, The Duke Ellington Reader, The Miles Davis Companion, and The Lester Young Reader.

Morgenstern taught jazz history at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Brooklyn College (where he was also a visiting professor at the Institute for Studies in American Music), New York University, and the Schweitzer Institute of Music in Idaho. He served on the faculties of the Institutes in Jazz Criticism, jointly sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and the Music Critics Association, and was on the faculty of the Master’s Program in Jazz History and Research at Rutgers University.

Morgenstern was a former vice president and trustee of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences; was a co-founder of the Jazz Institute of Chicago; served on the boards of the New York Jazz Museum and the American Jazz Orchestra; and was a director of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation and the Mary Lou Williams Foundation. He was a member of Denmark's International JAZZPAR Prize Committee since its inception in 1989.stern won eight Grammy Awards for Best Album Notes and received ASCAP's Deems Taylor Award for Jazz People in 1977 and in 2005 for Living with Jazz.

Visit arts.gov for more information on Morgenstern, including a 2006 interview and a 2011 podcast.