Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Thundercat, Samara Joy and more selected for Festival International de Jazz de Montréal Awards

Photo Credit: Marc Millman

The Festival International de Jazz de Montréal has unveiled the recipients for its 2025 awards. From June 26 to July 5, the pioneering jazz festival will present its 45th annual celebration of the musical form, honoring its heritage and looking to its future with prizes established in honor of the genre’s legendary innovators. This year, Thundercat, Natalia Lafourcade, Samara Joy, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and Duncan Hunter Neale have been selected for the prestigious Miles Davis, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King and Oliver Jones Awards.

Thundercat will be the 30th winner of the Miles Davis Award, which honors a world-renowned jazz artist for the totality of their body of work and innovations towards the genre’s new horizons. In his decade and a half of recording as a producer, singer, songwriter and massively influential funk-soul bassist, not to mention his formidable stint with celebrated thrash outfit Suicidal Tendencies, Stephen Lee Bruner has brought jazz sensibilities back to the top of the charts with landmark records like The Golden Age of the Apocalypse, Drunk and It Is What It Is and collaborations with Flying Lotus, Kendrick Lamar and more. His selection for the award established in 1994 follows previous honorees like Marcus Miller (2024), Robert Glasper (2022), Béla Fleck and the Flecktones (2018), Jack DeJohnette (2017), Sonny Rollins (2010), Keith Jarrett (2004) and Herbie Hancock (1997).

For the eighth annual B.B. King Award, the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal has named Christone “Kingfish” Ingram. Kingfish was rightly deemed as one of the blues’ foremost torchbearers, with an electrifying and soul-stirring guitar sound that honors and renews the legacy of the vital tradition. His selection follows previous winners like Buddy Guy (2019), George Thorogood (2018), Charlie Musselwhite (2017), Taj Mahal (2016) and the award’s namesake in 2014. Celebrated jazz vocalist Samara Joy has earned the 25th Ella-Fitzgerald Award, which highlights her scene-defining sound and major impact on the global jazz community, and Duncan Hunter Neale is the fifth recipient of the Oliver Jones Award, which spotlights promising university-level musicians of Montréal who identify as members of visible minorities.

Learn more about the 45th Festival International de Jazz de Montréal at montrealjazzfest.com