The winners of the 2019 NZ Jazz Awards, the Recorded Music NZ Best Jazz Artist / Te Kaipuoro Tautito Toa and the APRA Best Jazz Composition, were announced in Wellington on Sunday.

GRG67 were awarded the Best Jazz Artist Tui, while Callum Allardice became the first artist to win three Best Jazz Composition awards.

After curating a number of compositions, Roger Manins needed to find the right musicians to help bring his visions to life. And so GRG67 was born, consisting of himself, Michael Howell, Mostyn Cole, and Tristan Deck.

The compositions were developed with these musicians in mind, and this is evident in the cohesion of their album ‘The Thing’ – an excellent eight-song collection of tracks performed by some of Aotearoa’s most well-known jazz musicians. Rattle Records (label home to all three finalist acts) describe it as “… an album with attitude to burn, an exuberant, take-no-prisoners, high-energy blast that brims with unapologetic musical joy.”

The award for Best Jazz Composition went to Motueka guitarist and composer Callum Allardice (impressively for the third time), for his composition Chungin’.

In 2016 Callum’s Sons of Thunder took the inaugural Best Jazz Composition Award, and he followed that up by winning a second time in 2017, with Deep Thought.

Finalists For NZ Best Jazz Artist

• Winner: GRG67
• Antipodes
• Dog

Finalists For Best Jazz Composition

• Winner: Callum Allardice – Chungin’
• Grant Hughson – Follow The Sugar To The Gee
• Jasmine Lovell-Smith – Cerulean Haze