Jazz Graduate Jazzmeia Horn Wins Top Award at Monk Competition
Jazzmeia Horn, a 2014 School of Jazz graduate, has once again shown that she was born to be a jazz musician when she walked away last Sunday as winner of the 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition.
The Monk Competition, which changes its instrumental focus from year to year, is widely recognized as the most prestigious of its kind for jazz, and a boost to young careers. Horn will receive a $25,000 music scholarship and a recording contract with Concord Music Group.
In Los Angeles at the competition and all-star gala concert, in tribute to the producer Quincy Jones, Horn performed jazz standards “Moanin’” and “Detour Ahead.”
This isn’t the first time Horn has been honored. As a freshman at the School of Jazz, she received DownBeat magazine’s 33rd Annual Student Music Award in the Undergraduate College Vocal Jazz Soloist category. In her junior year at the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition, Horn won the “Rising Star Award” after bringing the crowd to its feet with her rendition of “Sweet Georgia Brown.” She claimed the top prize a year later with an electrifying performance of “I Remember,” “You Go to My Head,” and “East of the Sun.”