# Bridgewater imprinted her personality on the proceedings, offering hugs and warm encomia to the singers: Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2019/12/29/bridgewater-imprinted-her-personality-on-the-proceedings-offering-hugs-and-warm-encomia-to-the-singers-video/
- Published: 2019-12-29T20:33:31+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**On Nov. 6, Newark’s jazz public radio station, WBGO, marked a milestone by throwing
itself a 40th anniversary party. **

The Champions of Jazz gala was held in Manhattan, at Capitale, a high-end events
space situated in an 1893 Beaux Arts building designed by Stanford White. Several
hundred station members and friends sipped and mingled over a pre-show buffet, then
filed into the grand 15,000-square-foot ballroom.

Trumpeter Steven Bernstein, whose groove-rich, blues-tinged concept of hardcore 
jazz aptly signifies the WBGO soundtrack, led a band through repertoire associated
with the career of Dee Dee Bridgewater, one of the evening’s two honorees. (The 
other was André Ménard, co-founder of the Montreal Jazz Festival.)

Bridgewater imprinted her personality on the proceedings, offering hugs and warm
encomia to the singers. At about the 60-minute mark, she placed a winning bid for
a signed guitar that Pat Metheny had donated to the auction. The event raised $325,000.

“I thought if people saw that an artist who’s been involved with WBGO was willing
to pay that kind of money, they’d perhaps be inspired to contribute,” Bridgewater
said. Her popular radio show,_ Jazz Set_, which she inherited from Branford Marsalis
in 2003 and hosted until 2016, originated with WBGO, as does Simon Rentner’s _The
Checkout_, an hourly music magazine, and the Christian McBride-hosted _Jazz Night
in America_.

“I consider WBGO part of my extended musical family,” Bridgewater continued. “They’ve
broadened their musical horizons beyond just straightahead jazz, but it’s still,
in my humble opinion, our premier jazz station.”

During the past decade, WBGO—which covers the entire New York metropolitan area—
also has broadened its programming reach to operate on a global playing field via
digital and streaming platforms.

“We’ve been innovators and risk-takers,” said WBGO President and Chief Executive
Officer Amy Niles, who took her post in 2014. During her tenure, WBGO’s membership
has numbered about 14,000 with an operating budget of $5.5 million. The station 
employs a staff of 46.

“There’s no bigger concentration of jazz music in the U.S. than where I’m sitting
right now,” Niles said by phone from her office. A former singer and actress who
stepped away to raise a family, she grew up in a Greenwich Village apartment building
whose tenants included guitarist Jim Hall and jazz journalist Nat Hentoff. Now a
Newark resident, she discussed how WBGO addresses its international audience while
maintaining roots in her adopted home, where Sarah Vaughan and Wayne Shorter grew
up.

Niles emphasized that she continually exhorts WBGO’s on-air programmers—among them
veterans Michael Bourne, Gary Walker and, until recently, Rhonda Hamilton—to nurture
an intimate relationship with their listeners.

“I always tell them, ‘Every time you turn on the mic, you don’t know who’s going
to hear something,’” Niles said. “We may broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people,
but we do it one person at a time. Everybody’s experience with us is personal, whether
they’re in Thailand or Brooklyn or Newark. Our community is Newark and our community
is the music, and we endeavor to honor both always, because both are essential to
who we are.”

![Image](https://i0.wp.com/downbeat.com/images/news/_full/WBGO_credit_JonathanChimene.
jpg?w=640)

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