Kresge Foundation President and CEO Rip Rapson delivered the following comments at the Kresge Arts in Detroit Award Celebration at the College for Creative Studies’ Taubman Center honoring the 2025 Kresge Eminent artist Marion Hayden, the 2025 Kresge Award Fellows and Gilda Snowden Emerging Artist Awards recipients on July 15, 2025. 

Thank-you Katie (McGowan) … and thank-you Don (Tuski). Before I go any further, I wanted also to thank Christina DeRoos, who preceded Katie and who recently retired after leading Kresge Arts in Detroit (KAID) for more than a decade; she was a great steward of the program.

It was roughly 18 years ago that we at Kresge proposed that the foundation support artists for their contributions to the community – in a word, for simply being artists. Any number of people suggested that that was a bit crazy – shouldn’t the artists have to produce a work, or a show, or an exhibition, or something? But it struck me as anything but crazy – why wouldn’t we want to reward people who were working every day to test the limits of our understandings, our biases, our aspirations . . . who were interrogating our cultural heritage . . . who were seeking to substitute the fresh and energizing for the stale and unproductive.

So, we asked the College for Creative Studies to develop ways of supporting the community’s artists in ways that would help them thrive – providing financial support to be sure, but also offering resources that might help them develop a business plan or identify a network of collaborators. And the College has done that magnificently and, in the process, have themselves become one of the strongest advocates for this city’s cultural work. So, thank you again Katie and Don and your staff for all you’ve done.

If you’ve been to one of these celebrations in the past, you don’t need to be told that there’s a powerful energy when you bring this much talent and creativity and passion for art and community life together in one room. Today promises to be no different.

I’m going to defer to others to describe our remarkable group of Fellows and Gilda awardees. Suffice it to say, they – you – are spectacular.

But I do want to say a few words about our 17th Kresge Eminent Artist, Marion Hayden.

Each and every one of our previous 16 Eminent Artists has exemplified excellence in their chosen art form . . . has manifested a profound embrace of the cultural richness of our city . . . and has demonstrated an abiding commitment to sharing their craft with the next generation. Marion Hayden fits that mold to a tee.

As we’ve begun preparing the monograph chronicling Marion’s life and work – which is being pulled together by Nichole Christian, and which will be published this fall – I’ve been struck by three themes.

The first is that Marion’s initial sparks of creativity were recognized, nurtured, and amplified by a family life filled with support and creativity – an environment that enabled those sparks to become the fire of her art.

Marion was immersed in jazz in her home from her very earliest years. To be sure, she took in the sounds of Motown that were ubiquitous for members of her generation. But the record collection of her father drew Marion back into an even earlier legacy, with the genius of Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, and others reverberating throughout the home.

As her father played what he loved, those sounds buried themselves deeply in Marion’s soul. Her parents recognized that, giving Marion every possible opportunity to cultivate her passion. That experience transformed her.

When just 15 years old, she enrolled in the MetroArts summer jazz program that opened the door for her to observe, learn from, and even play alongside jazz giants like pianist Harold McKinney, trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, and saxophonist Wendell Harrison.

Marcus, for example, invited her to perform in his band early on – the first sidewoman he hired – and exerted a profound influence on how she brought her improvisational style into an ensemble dynamic.

The second theme grew from the first: the passions born and nurtured at home grew and flourished under the tutelage of powerful mentors.

The multi-dimensional artistic identity that Marcus and Wendell and others recognized so early matured as Marion worked with increasing frequency alongside luminaries such as the saxophonist Donald Walden and his Free Radicals ensemble or the drummer Roy Brooks and his combo the Artistic Truth or the bebop pianist Kenn Cox or the vocalist Ursula Walker.

That identity came to bear an unmistakable signature. Whether on display in her Grammy-nominated work with Straight Ahead from the ‘80’s or . . . in her gigs as a side-person in the decades since . . . or in her movement among different genres while fronting her own group or as a composer, Marion’s artistry is immediately recognizable for its passion . . . its technical mastery . . . its improvisational prowess . . . its refined, yet powerful, emotional authenticity. To hear her bass is to witness a distinctive lyricism possessed of a nuanced, almost voice-like quality.

Marion often describes these mentors as her “professors” – fellow artists who not only invited her to play alongside them, but who carried with them – and passed along – Detroit’s deep and powerful jazz traditions.

And so, to the third theme: Marion serving as a mentor and a nurturer in return.

Marion is now the one preserving the legacy of the elders, serving as a bridge between jazz past and jazz future. She does it formally as a faculty member at both Oakland University and the University of Michigan.

Just a quick story. Marion felt that the University of Michigan had failed to recognize adequately the contributions of one of its music department faculty members, and one of her mentors: Geri Allen, the great Detroit pianist. Allen had preceded Marion on the University’s faculty, before passing away at the far too young age of 60.

When the University offered Marion a faculty position in their Jazz Studies Department, Marion agreed, but only on the condition that the position be named in Allen’s honor. Her reasoning was pure Marion: “At least every time a student or someone saw my name, they’d see the name Geri Allen and would maybe have a reason to ask about her legacy.’’

On the one hand, a small act. On the other, however, an affirmation of how important Marion believes it is to acknowledge that she continues in Allen’s artistic and pedagogical lineage.

So, it is my deep honor to introduce the Geri Allen Collegiate Lecturer in the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan … and the 17th Kresge Eminent Artist, Marion Hayden.

Marion is the third jazz musician to win the Kresge Eminent Artist Award following in the footsteps of Marcus Belgrave and Wendell Harrison.

But I think it’s fair to say that Marion is also following the footsteps of our Kresge Eminent Artist playwright Bill Harris, whose play Coda is all about what he called “the Detroit way.”

That Detroit way is about embodying levels of sophistication and soul inherent in the music – and to take that music as a gift that has value only when it is shared.

And in this way, Marion Hayden is as Detroit as it gets.

Thank you, Marion, and congratulations!