
The Rolling Stones, Laura Mvula, Damien Chazelle, Donny McCaslin and Gilles Peterson were among the winners at the 2017 Jazz FM Awards, which took place last night (25 April) at Shoreditch Town Hall in the heart of East London.
A glittering array of UK and international talent turned out to celebrate the very best of jazz, blues, soul and beyond, as the music industry and public figures, including Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, Laura Mvula, Van Morrison, Georgie Fame, Adrian Lester, Will Young, Maxi Jazz, The Brand New Heavies, Courtney Pine and more, gathered at a ceremony hosted by Jazz FM presenter Jez Nelson.
The Stones collected an impressive two Awards, fighting off stiff competition to take home the accolades of Blues Artist of the Year and the public voted Album of the Year, sponsored by Arqiva, which were personally accepted by Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger, and Ronnie Wood. Blue and Lonesome producer Don Was sent a message direct from California, and Watts was also presented with The Gold Award in recognition of his significant contribution to jazz and blues from his long-term friend and iconic British jazz musician Evan Parker.
Don Was said:
The Rolling Stones are among some of the most hard-working and talented musicians ever to step in front of a microphone, and when they kick into gear, the whole becomes far greater than the already gigantic sum of the parts that's exactly what happened during the making of Blue and Lonesome
La La Land and Whiplash Director Damien Chazelle was honoured with The Impact Award and thanked the station via video:
I want to thank Jazz FM for honouring me with this year's Impact Award. It truly means the world to me, I've been jazz obsessed my whole life, as a former wannabe jazz musician. I was never quite good enough to make it so I decided to film jazz musicians instead and try to put jazz on screen I truly believe in the marriage between jazz and cinema, and I hope to play a small tiny part in keeping that tradition alive.
Other highlights from the night included Laura Mvula receiving the Award for Soul Artist of the Year, which she followed up with a memorable live rendition of The Man I Love as a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, whose birthday centenary coincided with the event. PPL Lifetime Achievement Award winner Georgie Fame, who after being presented with his Award by Van Morrison, captivated audiences with an exclusive, one off collaboration with MBE trumpeter Guy Barker, and Donny McCaslin flew in especially for the ceremony to perform material from his critically acclaimed album in memory of David Bowie, Beyond Now.
McCaslin also took home the International Jazz Artist of the Year Award, and Donny was surprised with a special video from Tony Visconti, congratulating him on the honour:
Congratulations Donny on winning the International Jazz Artist of the Year Award. When we did Blackstar together you blew our minds because you're a one take guy and David and I weren't quite used to such professionalism. If it wasn't for you Blackstar wouldn't be the success that it is, it was so much fun working with you and your band. This is a well-deserved Award.
South London jazz/groove duo on the rise Yussef Kamaal were named as the Breakthrough Act of the Year, and in their absence the Award was collected by DJ Gilles Peterson, who discovered and signed them to his label Brownswood Records in 2016. Peterson also picked up the Digital Initiative of the Year Award in recognition of Worldwide FM. US drummer and social activist Jaimeo Brown was honoured with Jazz Innovation of the Year for his Transcendence project.
Richard Johnson, Head of Commercial Radio at Arqiva said:
It was a brilliant evening and were delighted to have supported the Awards. Im personally a huge fan of Jazz and Blues, so to see the range of international talent from the genre recognised and celebrated was fantastic.
As for the Album of the Year Award which we sponsored, a huge congratulations to the musical legends that are The Rolling Stones for picking up the award, well and truly deserved!
The full list of winners is as follows:
BREAKTHROUGH ACT OF THE YEAR (Sponsored by Yamaha)
Yussef Kamaal
INTERNATIONAL JAZZ ARTIST OF THE YEAR (Sponsored by Oris Watches)
Donny McCaslin
VOCALIST OF THE YEAR (Sponsored by PRS for Music)
Norma Winstone
INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR (Sponsored by Rathbones)
Nikki Yeoh
BLUES ARTIST OF THE YEAR (Sponsored by The Piano Bar Soho)
Rolling Stones
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...