David Liebman got his start in the early ’70s as a sideman on saxophone for such esteemed leaders as m: John McLaughlin, m: Elvin Jones and m: Miles Davis. Like so many others, he was initially inspired by m: John Coltrane, which is one of the reasons Liebman pursued and is best known for his soprano sax work, creating a nimble, pliable and surprisingly muscular sound on the instrument. Always a prolific leader who does a wide variety of projects, Liebman has released 40 albums in the past decade alone. He’s also got a myriad of gigs coming up. Now 64 years old, Liebman isn’t exactly an elder statesman by modern standards of aging, but recognition has been coming in of late with honorary degrees and celebrations for his longtime work as one of the founders and artistic director of International Association of Jazz Schools. Perhaps most impressive is that fact that he’s been selected as a 2011 NEA Jazz Master by the National Endowment of the Arts, an honor he’ll receive Jan. 11 during a gala event at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Fredrick P. Rose Hall in Manhattan. All in all, the saxophonist seems to be as busy as he’s ever been. I caught up with him via phone at his home in Stroudsburg, Pa., to see what’s up. In light of all this activity recently, did you or someone else have a dream saying you had limited time left on Earth? I could appear that way [laughs]. No, no, nothing that dramatic. In some ways, in jazz you can’t control your timetable of events, such as the release of records. I still call them records. But, in general, I don’t know. I’m going through a nice little springtime, I guess. I’m feeling good. It seems like there’s been a record a week for a while now. We’ll call it the slow demise of our business: It’s not even close to what it was a few years ago. It now getting to the point where people won’t even be holding a CD in their hand much longer. Is there a feeling of urgency? In a certain way, I think we all feel it. Sure we have the Internet now, but a CD with your picture on it and the act of selling it seems to be in imminent danger of becoming extinct. So, in a way, I think everyone is in a rush because the format is doomed. This is in regards to physical product in your hands. You can still go out and play a gig as a musician, though. Yeah, that is true. We can play almost every night. Also, in jazz, unlike other styles of music, you get rewarded for your longevity. You gain slow, gradual respect over time, and that means your box office is just that much better. I wouldn’t say it’s a lot, but it allows you to make a living. You are treated with more respect as an elder than you are in just about any other field of music. Classical is similar: I used to say when I was younger, “Where is the reward?” It comes when you are older&#151the older you get, the more you get, and you keep getting better as a musician. You’re 64. I wouldn’t say that you are a sage elder quite yet. Maybe 30 years ago, 64 would have been old, but not these days. You and Joe Lovano and Fred Hersch and others that age still seem to be in the middle of their career. We used to be “young lions,” but now you can call us “maturing young lions”&#151from 50 to my age or 70. I’ve got neighbors like Phil Woods who will be 80, and Bob Dorough, who will be 86. Lee Konitz, who I have a lot of interaction with now, is in his 80s. These are guys who are the elder statesmen. So then how does it feel to be named an NEA Jazz Master? In the greater scheme of things, it means something to people outside the music, to the guy who delivers your mail and stuff like that. It’s public recognition. People say, “He’s a musician who travels all over the world, but what does he do?” You can then say, “He’s a guy who got an award from the government.” The main thing for me is being at all considered in the same group as all those other musicians who in the last 20-plus years who have received the award. I have to pinch myself when I think of that. I’m not Miles Davis, so to be up there with those guys is a privilege and a thrill. It’s nice to get it while you are still working. It’s almost like its for work past, present and future. I’m not sure how they pick it. Maybe when I receive it in three weeks I’ll find out [laughs]. I don’t have much confidence in government in general, but now after they picked me I’m beginning to think there is a ray of light about how things are going. You jumped into the education a lot earlier than many jazz musicians out there. How did that happen? I began to get involved in the late ’70s. Then in the ’80s it became a thing that I was doing. Not many were at that time. I always tell a story of Freddie Hubbard. I live in Stroudsburg, and nearby is East Stroudsburg, which has a state university. And there is a guy in the music program there who brings in guests to lecture. He brought Freddie Hubbard to play with the community band, and, of course, part of the gig was to give a clinic. There at 3 o’clock in the afternoon was the greatest trumpeter who ever lived, and who could be a bad boy, and he was talking straight and sane, and with humility to maybe 80 or 100 people. I went back to say hello and he told me that he’d never done one of these in his life. So if Freddie Hubbard was doing this in the early ’90s, you knew that jazz education had truly arrived. By then, it was ensconced. But when I started to do it, it was early on. There were still questions about whether you could even teach jazz. How do you teach creativity? Questions like that. Before I would say that there was no way to teach creativity, but by the ’80s there was a demand. So I had to figure out how to talk about it. Figure out what I was doing and how to explain it to someone else. Two recent albums have been tributes to the music of others. How did the album ‘Lieb Plays the Blues a la Trane’ happen? I did it with my regular group and it was just another gig, but rather than doing the book [of songs] that we usually do&#151which was Kurt Weill and Alec Wilder, composers whose work I’d covered with this trio&#151I just decided to go in and play straight ahead and some blues. It ended up sounding good. Watch David Liebman’s Tribute to John Coltrane on ‘My Favorite Things…
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Agathe von Trapp, 97, a member of the musical family whose escape from Austria was the basis for "The Sound of Music," died Tuesday at a hospice in Towson, Md., after suffering congestive heart failure in November, said her close friend Mary Louise Kane.

Kane and Von Trapp lived together for five decades and ran a kindergarten in nearby Glyndon until 1993…
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Japanese band drums up support for victims of tragedy. Students in the Green Band Assn., this year performing Michael Jackson music in the Rose Parade, get affirmation during their trip to the United States.

On the blacktop of an empty parking lot, brass instruments and moonwalking merge.

It is the day before Christmas and nearly 200 Japanese high school and college students sporting white fedoras strut outside Angel Stadium as they practice one of Michael Jackson’s greatest hits…
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Bobby Farrell, singer in the ’70s disco group Boney M, died Dec. 30 while on tour in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was 61. Farrell was found dead of unknown causes in his hotel room after he failed to answer a wake-up call.

Boney M was created in 1974 by Frank Farian; the German producer achieved infamy in the ’90s as the fabricator of faux vocal duo Milli Vanilli, who were stripped of their best new artist Grammy after it was revealed they didn’t sing on their hits. Farian performed the male vocals on Boney M’s first European hit, "Baby Do You Wanna Bump," and then assembled a group to work as a live unit…
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It’s the end of the year, and time to look back at all the predictions I made in January 2010. Were they all right, or were they almost all right? In cases where I was wrong, is my guess not somehow more true than the truth itself?

Should the nations of the world bow down before my powers of prophecy, or should I merely get an eight-digit check and a mansion in every known biome? Only the rest of this column can tell…
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This week on Popcast, The Times music podcast: why 2010 was a great year for jazz.

Discussing their Top 10 lists as well as the big events of the year, our critics Ben Ratliff and Nate Chinen field questions about the genre from Jon Pareles and Ben Sisario. They also review some of the best new talent in jazz, including Jason Moran, Antonio Sanchez, Mary Halvorson and others "who have grown up over the last 15 years into players of real importance," says Ben Ratliff in the conversation…
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It was well past 11 on Tuesday night at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, and Ms. Lauryn Hill&#151maybe the most gifted female rapper in history, one of the most versatile pop talents in recent memory and also one of the great modern celebrity recluses&#151was nowhere in sight. By the time her D.J. played the third Nicki Minaj song of the night you had to wonder if it was a taunt…
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She’s in ‘Promises, Promises’ on Broadway, but she’ll be in L.A. Friday in concerts at Disney Hall. Then there’s ‘Promises’ to wrap and a new album and more ‘Glee’ and, well, whew! Kristin Chenoweth will perform two shows on New Year’s Eve at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The recent East Coast blizzard has air traffic backed up for days, but several feet of snow isn’t about to stop the theatrical juggernaut known as Kristin Chenoweth from embarking on a bicoastal, New Year’s whirlwind tour…
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