John Hasse

Hasse is a music historian, pianist, and award-winning author and record producer. He serves as Curator of American Music at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, where he was founding Executive Director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra, an acclaimed big band, and where he founded the national Jazz Appreciation Month, celebrated every April throughout the U.S.

Hasse is the author of a critically acclaimed biography, Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, with a Foreword by Wynton Marsalis, and the editor of a major illustrated history, Jazz: The First Century, with Forewords by Tony Bennett and Quincy Jones. Library Journal called the book “a major contribution to the understanding of jazz.”

At the Smithsonian, Hasse was co-Director of America’s Jazz Heritage, a 10-year, $7-million partnership with the Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. He led the Institution’s efforts to acquire the 200,000-page Duke Ellington archive, and curated the traveling . . .
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