Ann Meier Baker, on her new job and NEA Jazz Masters

April 14, 2015 by Howard Mandel

I’m pleased to have interviewed Ann Meier Baker, who was appointed last October as the National Endowment for the Arts’ director of Music and Opera – a position that includes responsibilities for the U.S.’s federal support of jazz, such as the induction of NEA Jazz Masters, celebrated with a live-streamed concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 20.

Ms. Baker follows Wayne Brown, who left the Endowment after 16 years to become president and CEO of the Michigan Opera Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. She took up her post in January 2015, arriving from Chorus America, where she’d been president and CEO;  before that she was founding director of National School Boards Association Foundation. She began her professional career as a member of the United States Air Force Singing Sergeants. She’s a relative newcomer to jazz, but has eagerly dived in. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

HM: Have there been any articles about you since your appointment to the National Endowment for the Arts?

AMB: There were a few before I arrived, and since then I don’t think any. You are the first.

HM: That makes me happy. May I ask: What is within your job’s purview?

AMB: I have a broad portfolio, my area being music and opera. In the music categories that includes jazz, orchestra, chamber music — a real variety of genres – as well as opera. So the sphere that I’m working in is exciting and quite wide-ranging.

HM: And how does the NEA’s music program support this world of music?

AMB: The NEA’s grants go to organizations. Organizations put forward projects, applying for the grants we offer, and we consider those. We also work with a number of service organizations that have perspectives and suggestions about what kinds of organizational support their genres need, so we solicit information and make decisions about programming that might be supported on the basis of it.

HM: The jazz world no longer has a service organization. Does that put jazz at a disadvantage at the NEA?

AMB: I was sad to see the jazz organization go out of business a few years ago [the International Association for Jazz Education ended its corporate existence in 2009, and the Jazz Alliance International last reported to the IRS in 2006] but I was recently at the Chamber Music America conference, and saw a number of jazz musicians at that conference. So they [CMA] are one of those service organizations, with members doing the great work in the field, and they can point us to that exciting work, as well as serve as a conduit for information we want to share. I know that you’re involved with an association of jazz journalists, so that’s another service organization to the jazz field.

read more: http://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/2015/04/ann-meier-baker-nea-director-of-music-and-opera-on-her-new-job-and-nea-jazz-masters.html