Prestigious Eminent Artist Award comes with a $100,000 prize plus short film and monograph

Award-winning jazz bassist, educator and mentor Marion Hayden has added the 2025 Kresge Eminent Artist award to her long list of achievements. The annual award is regarded as metro Detroit’s highest arts honor.

“I’m not a person who finds herself speechless much,’’ Hayden said of the award and its accompanying $100,000 cash prize, “but this is a real moment, kind of hard to process when you’re just out doing the work, doing what you love.’’

The 17th metro Detroiter to receive the honor for lifetime artistic achievement and contributions to the region’s cultural communities, Hayden becomes the youngest Kresge Eminent Artist at age 68 and the second recipient to have previously received a Kresge Artist Fellowship (2016).

Along with the monetary prize, Hayden’s life and career will be the subject of a short film and a monograph slated for release later this year. “I credit Detroit and its artists and its wonderful creative culture for so much of who I am,’’ she said. “We have such a strong community. It’s still my muse.’’

“Marion Hayden is the third jazz musician and the first of her generation to receive this award. Like Wendell Harrison and the late Marcus Belgrave before her, she upholds and extends a rich Detroit legacy as an artist and generously passes on to younger musicians what has been passed on to her,” said Kresge President Rip Rapson. “And, like all our Kresge Eminent Artists, she exemplifies how the arts ground and build a community, manifesting the powers of creativity to connect us.”

In addition to Belgrave and Harrison, other previous recipients have been opera impresario David DiChiera and harpist Patricia Terry Ross; authors Bill Harris, Naomi Long Madgett, Gloria House and Melba Joyce Boyd; photographers Leni Sinclair and Bill Rauhasuer; and visual artists Charles McGee, Ruth Adler Schnee, Marie Woo, Shirley Woodson, Olayami Dabls and Nora Chapa Mendoza. (More about the past Eminent Artists here.)

The Kresge Eminent Artist, Kresge Artist Fellowships and Gilda Awards are administered by the Kresge-funded Kresge Arts in Detroit office of the College for Creative Studies. Extending congratulations to Hayden, CCS President Don Tuski praised Hayden as “an extraordinary Detroiter and one of the country’s most accomplished jazz musicians.”

“Her dedication to the arts and the Detroit artistic community is profound and inspiring,” Tuski said.

Sushi with a side of surprise

As a nationally respected musician who happens to live in Detroit, Hayden routinely finds herself invited to perform at many of the city’s major arts events and celebrations honoring local and visiting cultural giants.

When she received the news of her selection, Hayden assumed the phone call was simply another performance request. She laughs, recalling how focused she was on a spur-of-the-moment lunch escape to her favorite sushi restaurant, Noble Fish in Clawson. “I’d had such a long morning,’’ Hayden said. “I told myself, today, girlfriend, you’re getting something you really like. I was on a mission.’’

Then, she heard the words, “2025 Kresge Eminent Artist.”

“I had to go and lean against a shelf in the market area for a minute,’’ she said. “I was just that stumped.’’

In the weeks since the Kresge call, the ever-busy Hayden is slowly beginning to reflect on a career that spans nearly five decades. “To be recognized, in my city, by other artists, means everything. I’m still trying to take it in; a big part of me keeps just saying, wow.”

The moments of reflection continue to be overshadowed by dual teaching posts and a performance schedule that remains in full swing. At her alma mater, the University of Michigan, she is the Geri Allen Collegiate Lecturer in the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation (a position named after another lauded Detroit musician, now deceased, of Hayden’s generation). She also teaches at Oakland University.

On any night in Detroit, she’s on stage either leading her ensemble Legacy or accompanying a cast of other local jazz legends or even former jazz students. “I’m busy, but I don’t mind because I love sharing the music, teaching it, playing it for whomever will allow me.’’ She also has a new residency at The Alluvion, a new performing arts center in Traverse City, Michigan, along with a performance series in Petoskey, Michigan, and a recent commission closer to home by the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) to compose and perform a live musical score at the Feb. 1 screening of The Symbol of the Unconquered, a 1920 Oscar Micheaux silent film. Hayden will also lead a Feb.13 tribute to the late Detroit percussionist Roy Brooks at the DIA.

Hayden showcases a lesser-known element of her artistry through her ensemble: composing. When she’s not teaching or leading ensembles of young artists, Hayden and Legacy are working hard to spread history through jazz. Through Legacy, which performs primarily original works, Hayden has received national, state and local grants supporting its focus on narrative, often historically driven suites of music. She’s written more than 60 pieces, including Ocean: The Life and Times of Phillis Wheatley, a suite based on the life of poet Phillis Wheatley, who, during the colonial era, became the first African American to publish a book. Unfortunately, most of Hayden’s original works remain unrecorded.

Beyond the world of music, Hayden is a wife, mother and proud Delta Sigma Theta sorority member. She lives in Highland Park and is married to the painter and sculptor M. Saffell Gardner, who was a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow. Together, they have two adult sons. Asukile, the eldest, is a printmaker. (He works for Kresge Arts in Detroit but is not involved in the annual Eminent Artist process.) Son Tariq is a jazz drummer, composer and group leader.

Dual commitment to art and community

Hayden is no stranger to artistic recognition or creative achievement. Jazz elites consider her a “first-call” bassist and an artistic pioneer.

Hayden is co-founder of Straight Ahead, a groundbreaking Detroit-based ensemble that made headlines in the late 1980s as the first all-female jazz group to be signed to Atlantic Records, and one of the few all-female jazz groups to record for a major label since the big band era.

Today, the Grammy-nominated ensemble, which became a favorite on the jazz festival circuit, playing a mix of jazzy styles, is widely hailed as a precursor to a new wave of female performers across the genre. Hayden released her own solo CD, Visions, in 2009, featuring an appearance by 2018 Kresge Eminent Artist Wendell Harrison, one of many early Hayden mentors. (Straight Ahead launched the solo career of violinist and MacArthur Genius Award recipient Regina Carter; the group continues to perform around Detroit and beyond.)

While Straight Ahead is an essential marker in Hayden’s career, confronting sexism in jazz and the music industry was never a primary goal. “Anyone who’s truly trailblazing,’’ she says, “is probably just being themselves. Working to stay true,’’ she explains. “That’s what my practice as a bassist has always been about making sure that I’m doing what I absolutely love. When you’re an artist of any kind, you have to do it for yourself first. It’s what I was focused on then, and it’s what’s still driving me; that and the I love to have for my community.’’

She has been lauded near and far for her work in front of the bass and beyond. Her numerous accolades paint a portrait of a musician as dedicated to preserving her chosen form as she is “gigging” with the band.

The awards include: a 2024 Detroit ACE award from the city’s Office of Arts, Culture and Entrepreneurship; a 2023 New Music USA composition grant; and a 2022 Ron Brooks Award from the Southeast Michigan Jazz Association. In 2019, Hayden received an AXD grant (a successor to the better-known Art X Detroit series) and a Creators of Culture grant for original musical works. She was the artistic director for a 2018 Knight Arts Foundation Grant encouraging young women in jazz and a recipient of the Jazz Hero Detroit award, one of a number given by the National Jazz Journalists Association to those who have made a significant contribution through their artistry and community engagement in cities across the country.

Hayden is also a distinguished arts advocate. Between her other commitments, she’s made time to serve as a grants panelist for the Detroit Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs, Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs, Art-Ops and the Highland Park Arts and Culture Commission. She’s also been a panelist or consultant for organizations including South Arts, Detroit Sound Conservancy, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Jazz Education Network, Chamber Music America and the McKnight Foundation.

The 2025 Kresge Eminent Artist selection panel members say Hayden’s dual commitment to art and community epitomizes the award’s objective.

“She’s such a deeply rooted community person, so ready and always willing to bring her creativity to wherever it’s needed,’’ said movement artist and Sidewalk Detroit Founder Ryan Myers-Johnson. “What you also get from her is a deep love of craft at a very high level. She could easily be someone who is unapproachable to the community, but she doesn’t have any kind of veil over who is worthy to hear her music.’’

Vincent Chandler, another panel member and an assistant professor of jazz studies at Wayne State University, said Hayden’s selection elevates the award because she is still an active performer engaged simultaneously with preservation, education and community.

“One of the things we talked about as panelists was the timing of someone receiving such an incredible award,’’ explained Chandler, a jazz composer, trombonist and bandleader who occasionally performs with Hayden. “It’s great timing for Marion. While she’s already done a lifetime of work as a phenomenal musician, educator and mentor. There’s so much more that she’ll be able to do as a result of this award.’’

Lineage and legacy

Marion Hayden’s birth certificate lists Marion and Herbert Hayden as her parents. But she’s also very much a child of jazz, steeped in a distinctly, and decades-long, Detroit style of playing and preserving the music.

Hayden traces the spark to her family’s home on Fullerton Street in Detroit’s historic Russell Woods neighborhood. The Haydens not only insisted that their two children, daughter Marion and son Herbert, be named after them but also immersed them in their favorite hobbies, traditions and values. That meant a healthy respect for education and a constant celebration of culture. Music played throughout the family’s home.

Hayden’s father worked for Detroit’s parks and recreation department and was a passionate record collector, primarily of jazz. His love became Marion’s love as if the rhythms and the beats she heard were calling her to join in.

Her first attempt to respond to what she heard began at home, at the piano. Both parents played. Her mom, a high school chemistry teacher, mainly played classical music, while her dad preferred “jazzy blues.” Neither the sound of the piano nor her mom’s teaching style connected with Marion. “Trying to learn something from your parent can be difficult,” she laughed.

Next up was the cello. At age 9, Marion reluctantly chose it over the options available to students at Detroit’s Admiral Albert G. Winterhalter Elementary School.

“I would’ve played the bass then, but they didn’t have any little basses,’’ she said, referring to the now-shuttered school. “I had to wait until I was 12 because I was tall enough then to stand up to a bass.”

Hayden didn’t just stand up; by age 15, she was excitedly leaning in. She was an avid listener and a committed student. Hayden, who’d first learned by ear, started studying with a who’s-who list of jazz veterans and legends, including Kresge Eminent Artist-to-be Marcus Belgrave. Their paths crossed first at Cass Tech High School, where Hayden was a student, and Belgrave was the artist-in-residence. She later transferred to and graduated from Henry Ford High School.

Ironically, when Hayden enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1973, music was not her focus. Instead, she chose a concentration in journalism with a minor in entomology. As much as her late parents had ignited her love of music, they had different ideas about her choosing the arts as a career.

“They felt it was not steady,’’ she recalled, quickly adding, “and they were 100% right.”

Hayden’s educational compromise never stopped the music. Although she pursued graduate studies in natural sciences — a year at U-M and two years at Michigan State University — and landed a job with the Michigan Department of Agriculture inspecting landscape plants for pests and diseases for a decade, Marion played on. She made a name for herself as a go-to accompanist for such Detroit jazz masters as the late Donald Walden, Kenn Cox, and legendary percussionist Roy Brooks. Her time under such greats is one of the reasons a litany of living jazz artists, local and national, have also made Hayden a collaborator. Among them, DeeDee Bridgewater, Kirk Lightsey, Steve Turre, Jon Faddis, Kamau Kenyatta, James Carter, Kareem Riggins, Terri Lyne Carrington, Ingrid Jensen, Nicolas Payton, Alvin Waddles, Charlie Gabriel of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Cindy Blackmon Santana and Gregory Porter.

Music and Detroit’s thriving arts culture continued to give Hayden life through new and constant learning. “My experiential base in Detroit has been amazing,’’ she said. “Musicians from other cities have deep respect for our Detroit jazz community. They know we have lineage, tradition and a very serious attitude about the music.’’

Jazz fans can continue to expect Hayden up front representing it all.

An interdisciplinary group of Metro Detroit artists and arts professionals selected Marion Hayden as the 2025 Kresge Eminent Artist.

• Vincent Chandler: Assistant professor of jazz studies, Wayne State University; jazz trombonist; composer; band leader; 2020 Kresge Artist Fellow
• Sharon Dow: Commissioner, Michigan Asian Pacific American Affairs Commission; Honor Board, Detroit Institute of Arts’ Friends of Asian Arts and Cultures; organizer, Asian Night
• Marion (Mame) Jackson: Educator, curator, emerita faculty, Wayne State University and University of Michigan
• Ryan Myers-Johnson: Executive director, Sidewalk Detroit; board member, Detroit Parks Coalition; board member, Detroit Puppet Company; movement artist
• Dave Serio: Storyteller; producer; curator of education and the Arab Film Festival at the Arab American National Museum