Neil Tesser

GRAMMY® Award-winning journalist Neil Tesser has reviewed, reported on, and broadcast jazz in Chicago for nearly 50  years, including "Jazz Forum" at NPR station WBEZ-FM Chicago (1980-1996); the nationally syndicated jazz commentary program "Listen Here!" (2005-2008); and from 2017-2019, programs on the WFMT Jazz Network, heard nationwide and in China. In 2018, he received the Jazz Journalists Association’s Marian McPartland-Willis Conover Award for Career Excellence in Broadcasting,

In 2015, Tesser received that organization's Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of his work in print journalism. A regular contributor to JAZZIZ Magazine, he has written liner notes for nearly 550 albums, receiving an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award and, in 2013, the GRAMMY for his notes to John Coltrane's Afro-Blue Impressions. Author of The Playboy Guide to Jazz (Plume Books), he has contributed chapters various anthologies, including The Oxford Companion To Jazz (Oxford, 2000), and he edited Learning To Listen, the autobiography of famed vibraphonist Gary Burton (Berklee Press, 2013). Jazz writer for the Chicago READER from 1973-2008, he was the first jazz critic for USA Today as well as Playboy Magazine's jazz critic from 1991-2002, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Downbeat and other magazines.

• Thursday at 5:00 PM for 2 hours: Jazz Across America- Chicago

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