It’s curious how America centric the Grammys are at least compared with the Oscars where for instance more British and Irish talent get a look in and win regular awards most years.
That isn’t the case at all at the Grammys beyond pop anyway. But great to see pop singer Olivia Dean pick up the best new artist award. Jazz pianist Deschanel Gordon has worked extensively with the singer. That’s as close as it gets for UK jazz! In other words sub footnote.
And yet the estimable Royal Academy of Music/Frost Miami Kenny Wheeler collaboration was nominated and so were, yes, the sleeve notes for the multi-national Anouar Brahem/Dave Holland/Django Bates/Anja Lechner record – the record itself deserved something a bit more! But none of these won anyway.
Casting around elsewhere even though it pipped the RAM Big Band release to scoop the gong I applaud the choice of the Christian McBride Big Band winner in the big band category and wins for Samara Joy and Laufey. But confusingly Laufey is deemed to inhabit another world that is but isn’t jazz. Both at the same time.
But it’s yet another universe entirely, one that leaves nary a trace on jazz in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Dublin and beyond. I don’t think jazzers are in the business of making jazz just to win awards. But it does no harm collecting something for the mantlepiece.
Eurojazz which is also incredibly healthy gets little or no recognition much either. But have a look at the great quality of Eurojazz issued last year and glimpse just what is out there that simply isn’t at all on the awards’ radar.
- Read a full list of the 2026 winners on the LA Times website
The Grammy awards have always been more about the musical-industrial complex than the music itself, and Americo-centrism has long limited the scope of US-based general news journalism as well as coverage of jazz, which itself has too often been permeated with excessive New York City-centrism. Thus a lack of interest in anything from elsewhere by the Grammy folks is, alas, hardly out of character in this context. I do find it telling that the best jazz performance award went to a piano player who’s been dead for 5 years, and I have to wonder if the tables have turned, with, this time around, vice-versa, Chick Corea riding the coattails of his bassist for that recording, this year’s chosen golden child for jazz, Christian McBride, a talented, versatile veteran whose accumulated laurels were already quite impressive before this year’s Grammy to-do. He’s also been mentioned as being on the short list to succeed Wynton Marsalis as director for Jazz at Lincoln Center, and will undoubtedly benefit from the Grammy-generated synergy. It was nice to see The Cincinnati Kid, Ashley Kahn (actually born in The Bronx) get another Grammy for liner notes. – Patrick HInely