By Michael Shain
The National Endowment for the Arts has, from time to time, designated more than a 120 musicians as Jazz Masters. It is a late-in-life distinction and most who have received it are as exhilarated by the stipend check that comes with it as they are with the honor.
Flushing Town Hall stages an NEA Jazz Masters concert every year with as many designees as it can muster. This year’s show featured three — trumpeter Jimmy Owens, drummer Jimmy Cobb and pianist Kenny Barron — in a concert of Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie, both of whom would have turned 100 years old this year.
The show was sold out weeks in advance. But for those who did not attend, here is what it looked like, backstage and on.
