57th Grammy Nominations Recognize NEC Musicians

New England Conservatory students, alumni, and faculty are included in nominations for the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, announced on Friday.

The Grammy Awards ceremony, at which winners are revealed, will be televised live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Sunday, February 8, 8pm EST, on CBS.

Final-round ballots will be mailed to voting members of The Recording Academy on December 17, and are due back to the accounting firm of Deloitte for tabulating by January 16, 2014.

Find NEC's past Grammy winners.

The Nominees

Three of the five contenders in the "Best Jazz Instrumental Album" category come from the NEC faculty.

Pianist Fred Hersch '77, an alumnus who has been a presence on NEC's faculty since the 1980s, is recognized for Floating, recorded with his trio. The Floating track "You & the Night & the Music" is also nominated for "Best Improvised Jazz Solo." Hersch has had six previous Grammy nominations. He received NEC's Outstanding Alumni Award in 1990.

Drummer Billy Hart joins Bobby Hutcherson, David Sanborn, and Joey DeFrancesco on the Blue Note album Enjoy the View, which consists of originals by the core trio.

Also on Blue Note is Jason Moran's All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller. Like the "In My Mind" project, which Moran brought to NEC in 2012, All Rise is an idiosyncratic reinterpretation of iconic work from the African-American cultural tradition.

Both of these Blue Note recordings have gotten extensive publicity as part of the label's 75th anniversary release program.

NEC is also represented in three of the five groups nominated for "Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album."

Bijon Watson '86 Prep has been lead trumpet for The Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra since 1999, when the group began a stretch as in-residence ensemble for the Hollywood Bowl Jazz series. Clayton-Hamilton is nominated for The L.A. Treasures Project.

Rufus Reid's band for Quiet Pride: The Elizabeth Catlett Project includes current D.M.A. student Michael Dease on trombone and John Clark '08 on horn.

OverTime: Music of Bob Brookmeyer memorializes the influential valve trombonist and large-form composer who created the NEC Jazz Composers' Workshop Orchestra during his time on the NEC faculty. Bob Brookmeyer taught at NEC from 1997 to 2007. The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, heard on this recording, includes trombonists John Mosca and Luis Bonilla; Mosca is a former member of the NEC faculty, and Bonilla teaches here currently.

Within the Classical categories, NEC is represented in "Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance" by a nomination for Dreams & Prayers, from the chamber orchestra A Far Cry with clarinetist David Krakauer. Many of A Far Cry's founding members were educated and met each other here, and NEC's unconducted Chamber Orchestra was one of the sources of inspiration that helped the group to take shape. More on NEC's partnership with A Far Cry.

The Grammy-nominated recording is the outcome of a Kickstarter campaign, which the group set up by saying, "We have six recordings out on various labels, but now for the first time, we wanted to take things a step further and create an album that follows one thread from start to finish." Following the theme stated in the title, the program includes interpretations of sacred themes by Hildegard von Bingen and Beethoven, as well as new works by Boston composers Osvaldo Golijov and Mehmet Ali Sanlikol '00 M.M., '04 D.M.A.