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U.S. Jazz Legend Louis Armstrong

Courtesy John Edward Hasse

This program on U.S. jazz legend Louis Armstrong is scheduled to coincide with Jazz Appreciation Month events in the U.S. and will be presented in association with the Johannesburg-based Jazz Appreciation Society. Although this program will center on Louis Armstrong, Dr. Hasse can discuss other jazz greats such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

Guest Biographies: Dr. Hasse is a music historian, pianist, and award-winning author and record producer. He serves as Curator of American Music at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, where he was founding Executive Director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, an acclaimed big band, and where he founded the national Jazz Appreciation Month, celebrated every April throughout the U.S.

Dr. Hasse is the author of a critically acclaimed biography, Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, with a Foreword by Wynton Marsalis, and the editor of a major illustrated history, Jazz: The First Century, with Forewords by Tony Bennett and Quincy Jones. Library Journal called the book “a major contribution to the understanding of jazz.”

At the Smithsonian, Dr. Hasse was co-Director of America’s Jazz Heritage, a 10-year, $7-million partnership with the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. He led the Institution’s efforts to acquire the 200,000-page Duke Ellington archive, and curated the traveling exhibition Beyond Category: The Musical Genius of Duke Ellington, which toured to 12 museums and 50 libraries. He also led the museum’s initiative to acquire the archives of Ella Fitzgerald, and co-curated the exhibition Ella Fitzgerald: First Lady of Song.

He is editor of Ragtime: Its History, Composers, and Music; producer-annotator of the two-CD set Beyond Category: The Musical Genius of Duke Ellington; and producer author of the book and three disc set The Classic Hoagy Carmichael. Dr. Hasse is a contributor to seven encyclopedias.