SEMJA Award to Hazen Schumacher
It is with great sadness that SEMJA notes the passsing of Hazen Schumacher on July 18, 2015. The award ceremony scheduled for July 26 is proceeding — now as an opportunity to remember Hazen's life and career. Joining us will be twelve members of the Schumacher family.
Southeastern Michigan Jazz Association's (SEMJA) 2015 Ron Brooks Award, named for the organization's founder, goes to Hazen 
Schumacher for his service to the jazz community. The award ceremony will be part of a concert at Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor on Sunday, July 26, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. with Paul Klinger's Easy Street Jazz Band. Cornetist Klinger will be joined on the Kerrytown stage by pianist Jim Dapogny, clarinetist Mike Jones on clarinet, trombonist Terry Kimura and vocalist Kerry Price. The band specializes in traditional jazz from the 1920s and 1930s.
Hazen Schumacher's contributions are primarily as a jazz broadcaster at WUOM-FM, University of Michigan Radio, going well beyond Ann Arbor, to the nation and the world at large. His syndicated radio show, "Jazz Revisited" (1967–1997), was at one time carried by more than 200 NPR stations (see photo above from a late 1970s fundraiser). The show featured jazz recordings made between 1917 and 1947, using the vast collections once housed at WUOM. After the station changed its format to all talk, the 60,000 records were taken over by the Jazz Museum Bix Eiben Hamburg, Germany. The "Jazz Revisited" programs are today available to the public on the Museum's website.
In 2008 he wrote A Golden Age of Jazz Revisited 1939–1942. Three Pivotal Years of Musical Excitement (NPP Books) with John Stevens, showing his mastery of jazz scholarship and story telling.
Schumacher was also one of the founders of SEMJA in 1987 and served for many years as its distinguished Vice President. He is also an active member of IAJRC, the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors, and helped organize its 2003 national meeting in Ann Arbor. In his job as a Professor of Communications at the University of Michigan he taught a popular course on jazz history. Members of Schumacher's production crew, and his wife Rusty, will be on hand at the concert to lend insight to his legendary announcing career.
The concert will be a fundraiser for SEMJA, a non-profit organization devoted to jazz education. Kerrytown Concert House is located at 415 North Fourth Ave. in Ann Arbor. Reservations can be made by calling 734-769-2999 or going online.