Bertha Hope was three years old when she started playing Brahms’ “Lullaby” on the piano after hearing it on the radio.
That’s when her shocked parents “started paying attention to the fact that I had some talent that needed to be nurtured,” recalls Hope. She became a jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader.
Now Hope is 88. She has toured extensively and recorded several albums. And she’s not done yet. That’s why a new initiative dedicated to the preservation of jazz will provide extra support for Hope and dozens of others.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Jazz Foundation of America announced the Jazz Legacies Fellowship in February. The new $15 million program will give 50 artists who are 62 years or older a lifetime achievement award that includes a $100,000 grant, professional support, and performance opportunities.
Hope calls her selection a “very humbling honor.” As one of the program’s first class of 20 fellows, she says, “It will change my life forever.”
Other fellows range from a 62-year-old drummer to a 94-year-old trumpeter. Saxophonist George Coleman, 89, played with trumpeter Miles Davis and other jazz legends in the 1960s. He’s still performing in 2025.
Valerie Capers, now 89, lost her sight at age six. She learned piano pieces by memorizing them in Braille. She later became the first blind graduate of the Juilliard School.
To make ends meet, most jazz musicians must tour and teach more than they would like. Jazz Foundation director Joe Petrucelli says the fellowship was meant to provide some security in an “unpredictable” profession.
Petrucelli told NPR that he thought the musicians might use the money as an opportunity to slow down. But most wanted to continue their work.
Hope says the grant will supplement her income enough to spend time digging through recordings made at her late husband’s Boogie Woogie Studio in New York.
“They’ve been in my closet for so long,” says Hope. “I would like to see if they’re worth saving.”
Organizers of the fellowship are thrilled. They had hoped it would encourage such work supporting both the history and future of jazz.
Jazz pianist Jason Moran—who is considered a rising star at age 50—is part of the next generation of musicians. He says that like many in the genre he learned from his elders: “They created the language that many of us younger musicians have just accepted and kind of pulled into our own.”
Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days. — Job 12:12
Why? Since its beginnings in the early 1900s, jazz has become an influential and beloved genre. And older musicians still have much to share with others.
Recommended Reading: For more about this inspiring music, see A Child's Introduction to Jazz by Jabari Asim and Marsalis on Music by the brilliant Wynton Marsalis.
Click the “video” button at the top of this story to watch our WORLDteen Sidebar interview with musician James Ward.
