Tomorrow night sees the London Festival Fringe hold its annual Awards for Art and Performance. Otherwise known as The Lennys, "the country's most expansive awards recognises the best in British art and entertainment across 11 categories", and the good news is that jazz is one of them. It's great to see jazz being included in a mainstream award and we're proud to note several of the nominees have been supported by Jazz Services in the past.
The longlist features some excellent names from the UK scene, from established names like Guy Barker and Phil Robson to newer stars including sax player Josh Arcoleo. In an interesting twist on traditional awards, the longlisted nominees then go on to select the shortlist nominees themselves - as the awards' website states, "As current and excellent practitioners of their art, the nominees themselves are the best people to judge each category". The shortlist nominees for this year's awards are as follows: Bad Ass Brass, Dennis Rollins, Empirical, Phil Robson, Phronesis and Soweto Kinch. More info on the awards here:
http://www.londonfestivalfringe.com/general/2012nominations/awards/jazz/?award=jazz
Good luck to all the nominees, and we'll hopefully have another report here on the outcome in a couple of days.