Northampton Jazz Festival Board President Ruth Griggs Named Jazz Hero

Griggs among 29 nationwide to receive Jazz Journalists Association recognition

Northampton Jazz Festival Board President Ruth Griggs has been named a Jazz Hero by the Jazz Journalists Association in its 25th annual recognition of “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz” across the United States.

Griggs has led the Northampton Jazz Festival since 2017, when she reformed the festival board, reinstated its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status and planned the first festival since 2015, which took place in 2018 at various venues throughout downtown Northampton.

The Jazz Journalists Association (JJA), convened in 1987, is a nonprofit organization with 250 international members that provides creative and educational resources to individuals that forward the great American art form known as jazz. The association offers events, podcasts, webinars, promotional and educational resources, and master classes to musicians, promoters, educators, broadcasters, journalists, photographers and writers in the genre of jazz.

Since 2001, the Jazz Journalists Association has identified and hailed individuals from local jazz communities across America who go beyond their basic responsibilities to sustain and expand on musical activities. The association believes Jazz Heroes are essential to the health of the overall jazz ecosystem, and supports local efforts to celebrate them. The 2025 Jazz Heroes campaign is concurrent with the 30th Annual Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards for jazz musicians.

Griggs, of Northampton, was also named a Difference Maker by Business West in 2022 for her decades-long career as a marketing strategist and her leadership of the Northampton Jazz Festival, which has become a respected organization attracting thousands to downtown Northampton each late September.

A virtual gala celebrating the 29 Jazz Heroes of 2025 will be held on April 17, and an in-person presentation of Griggs’ Jazz Hero certificate will be held locally at a later date.

Past association award winners in the greater CT River Valley region include Tom Reney, host of NEPM’s Jazz a la Mode, who received the Willis Conover-Marian McPartland Award for Career Excellence in Broadcasting in 2019, and Eugene Uman and Elsa Borrero, director and co-director of the Vermont Jazz Center, named Jazz Heroes in 2024. More about this year’s Jazz Heroes can be found at: news.jazzjournalists.org/29-jazz-heroes-across-north-america/

Said Griggs, “I am honored and humbled to stand alongside this impressive group of national Jazz Heroes – many of whom are my own heroes for all they do ‘to preserve and perpetuate this great American art form,’ to quote Max Roach.”

##