Chucho Valdés to receive 2025 Jazz Master Award in the US

Washington, April 22 (Prensa Latina) Prestigious Cuban pianist and composer Chucho Valdés will receive the Jazz Master Award, the highest honor currently awarded to a jazz musician in the United States, which in its 2025 edition will be awarded for the first time to a foreign and Latino artist.

April 22, 2025
09:55

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) will present the 2025 Jazz Master Awards during an annual concert on Saturday, April 26, at the Kennedy Center in Mexico City. Along with Valdés, Americans Marshall Allen (saxophonist), Marilyn Crispell (pianist), and Gary Giddins (critic) will be recognized for their outstanding contributions to the genre.

Considered the most influential figure in modern Afro-Cuban jazz, the US-based musician from the island was honored last week with the 2025 Leonard Bernstein Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the Longy School of Music in Cambridge.

Valdés received the award from the center’s president, Karen Zorn, and Jamie Bernstein, daughter of the renowned American composer and conductor (1918-1990) for whom the award is named.

In explaining its decision, the academic institution emphasized that Valdés, 83, “embodies many of the key values cultivated at Longy, including the freedom to explore, creative thinking and innovation, and the joy of making and sharing music with others.”

jrr/arm/mem/dfm