https://jjajazzawards.org/2026-jazz-hero-bill-martinez/

2026 Jazz Hero Bill Martinez

April 7, 2026

San Francisco Jazz Hero

Bill Martinez – 2026 San Francisco Jazz Hero

When a presenter is having trouble procuring a visa for a Cuban musician to perform in the United States, Bill Martinez often gets the call. The San Francisco immigration attorney has spent the past half century figuring out avenues to break through the barriers imposed by both governments that keep Cuban artists off American stages. It’s a calling he came by through his love of Latin American culture, and his own efforts to champion master musicians and dancers from throughout the region. And in maintaining ties between Latin American artists and their jazz kin, Martinez is an essential Jazz Hero.

A native San Franciscan, he graduated from the University of San Francisco and UC Law-San Francisco. In 1982, he and Juan Gonzalez, founder of the bilingual neighborhood newspaper El Teocholote, launched the Encuentro del Canto Popular, a San Francisco-based Latin American music festival that began as a one-off fundraiser. While it barely finished in the black, the event put Martinez on the map as a presenter with a vision guided by the nueva cancion movement, which used music as a tool to fight political oppression across Latin America.

“It was such an emotional night,” Martinez recalls. “We felt so empowered by this musical expression. It wasn’t successful as a fundraiser, but it was in terms of creating a home for this music.”

Over the years the event has presented some of Latin American music’s most illustrious stars at venues around the city. And as the Encuentro grew and evolved Martinez embraced new sounds while staying true to its original message of unity and resistance. Inspired by Bill Graham, “the way he brought together an array of music to create a community,” Martinez has always sought to feature “music from Chile, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, all the different genres within the arcoiris, the rainbow.”

More importantly, Martinez’s work with the Encuentro led him to become one of the nation’s leading experts in U.S.-Cuba cultural exchanges and artists’ visas. As a co-founder of Latino Entertainment Partners, which produced historically significant concerts of Cuban artists, Martinez has collaborated with many cultural organizations, mainly in the Bay Area. He was co-producer of the 2020 “concerts for Cuba” internet production of HotHouse Cultural Center (Chicago) featuring 100 artists from the U.S. and Cuba, and was awarded the 2023 globalFEST Impact Award for contributions to culture in the U.S.

—Andrew Gilbert, JJA Secretary and Board Member

Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel’s Urban Improvisation

Celebrating the Heroes behind the Jazz

As jazz — the music, business and culture of it — depends on an intricate and widespread network of activists, altruists and advocates to thrive, and celebrating local doers at least used to be a way to focus attention on the out-of-the-spotlight work necessary to make anything worthwhile happen, the Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) is for the 25th year naming and profiling Jazz Heroes.

I’ve formally retired from presiding over the JJA, but am deeply involved in promoting this campaign, hoping to remind people all over — general audiences! — that jazz is near them/us, presented by our neighbors, taught and sung and lived by devotees virtually everywhere. The JJA’s 34 2026 Jazz Heroes. are grassroots culture workers from 32 locales (including, for the first time, London). Their portraits and personality profiles are at JJAJazzAwards.org/2026-jazz-heroes. Among them:

Henry “The Skipper” Franklin (Los Angeles), legacy artist, bassist, mentor and music community anchor
Bill Martinez (San Francisco, CA), an immigration attorney who has facilitated dozens of performances by Cuban artists in the U.S.
Fiona Ross (London, UK), pianist, vocalist, songwriter and founder of Women in Jazz Media
Lauren Parks (East St. Louis, IL), leader of campaign to turn Miles Davis’s childhood home into the House of Miles community center
Kevin Struthers, under whose direction jazz programming of the now-shuttered Kennedy Center was a national asset

The complete class includes community-committed and issue-oriented music-makers of Akron, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Billings, Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Sacramento and Washington, D.C.; educators at academy, conservatory, studio and university levels in Ann Arbor, Northampton, San Juan and the Twin Cities; radio voices of Columbus, Detroit, Houston, Rochester, South Bend and West Hartford; Toledo’s jam-session organizer and Sacramento’s Thai restaurant venue-operator; the founder of New York City’s kid-centric Jazz Power Initiative and the publisher of AllAboutJazz.com, a free portal in its 30th year.

Jazz Heroes are nominated by supporters in their local communities, and receive JJA certificates in events attended by those fans. Houston deejay Tierney Malone, for instance, will accept his Jazz Award at a “Coltrane 100” concert at DACAMERA on April 10; longtime WGMC jazz anchor Derrick Lucas gets his certificate at a free April 14 Rick Holland Big Band “Jazz at The Beach” performance at Tropix Nightclub; and South Side griot Maggie Brown is to be feted at a JJA Party at Chicago’s Palmer House on April 29. Others TBA.

Jazz musicians, by definition, are jazz soldiers — but not all are Jazz Heroes, who go beyond their basic survival responsibilities to sustain and expand on musical activities above and beyond. A Honor Roll of all the Jazz Heroes from 2001 (then called members of “the A Team”) to 2025 is here.

The JJA is a 501 (c) 3 professional organization first convened in 1987, currently with more than 260 members worldwide. The 2026 Jazz Heroes campaign is concurrent with the 31^st Annual JJA Jazz Awards, winners to be announced May 5. The JJA also produces The Buzz podcast and Seeing Jazz photography master classes. In 2024, Cymbal Press published The Jazz Omnibus: 21st Century Photos and Writings by Members of the Jazz Journalists Association. The JJA maintains frequently updated JJANews and JJAJazzAwards; @JazzJournalists on Facebook, JJAnews on X, JazzJournalists on Instagram, and can be reached with emails to admin@jazzjournalists.org.

One more thing: It’s not necessary to be a Jazz Hero to enjoy (or even just sample) jazz. There’s a lot of it out there, all varieties, maybe you hear and it and don’t even notice. But beware, exposure breeds appreciation, enjoyment, embrace, enthrallment, devotion. It’s a slippery slope, starting with syncopation, swing and blue notes, leading who knows where? Not knowing’s a part of the fun.

https://www.artsjournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz/2026/04/celebrating-the-heroes-behind-the-jazz.html