The voice of Phil Schaap was as distinctive as the trumpet of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk’s piano, or the sumptuous saxophone harmonies of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, but he didn’t didn’t make his mark as a musician. Instead, Schaap was one of the leading jazz scholars in America, and the genre’s foremost evangelist. He was a radio host, a record producer, a concert programmer, an educator, a reissue producer, an archivist and a researcher, and served many other functions beyond those. His voice was the sound of an authoritative, passionate belief in the power of jazz, and in 2021 the National Endowment for the Arts named Schaap a Jazz Master himself.
Phil Schaap, Iconic Jazz DJ And NEA Jazz Master, Dies At 70
