The National Endowment for the Arts has announced the recipients of the nation’s highest honor in jazz. The 2025 NEA Jazz Masters are:

Marshall Allen is a saxophonist and 100-year-old leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Marilyn Crispell is an avant-garde pianist and composer.

Chucho Valdés is a pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger, and influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz.

Gary Giddins is a jazz critic and biographer, and recipient of the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy.

NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD, said:

We are delighted to welcome these four luminaries to the ranks of NEA Jazz Masters—they have each in their own way played a crucial role in the nurturing and development of this art form and demonstrate the immense diversity and creativity found in jazz today.

Each honoree will receive an award of $25,000 and celebrated at a free tribute concert held in collaboration with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on April 26, 2025.

For more information, go here.