Grammy Award-winning jazz bassist and distinguished professor emeritus Ronald Carter to receive honorary degree at Commencement.
Ronald Carter, Grammy-winning musician and one of the most prolific and influential bassists in jazz history, will receive an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree. Over the course of his six-decade career, Mr. Carter has recorded more than 2,000 records and played with jazz giants — from Thelonius Monk to Miles Davis. He was a member of the second Miles Davis Quintet in the mid-1960s, and later was a mainstay of CTI Records, making albums under his own name and appearing on many of the label’s records with a diverse range of other musicians. In 1987, Mr. Carter won a Grammy for an instrumental composition for the film “Round Midnight,” and in 1994 won another Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Group for a tribute album to Miles Davis. He performed on the Red Hot Organization’s compilation album, “Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool,” which was heralded as Album of the Year by TIME magazine. He performed at Clark in 2014.
Mr. Carter is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the music department of City College of New York, having taught there for 20 years. He joined the faculty of the Juilliard School in New York City in 2008, teaching bass in the school’s Jazz Studies program. In 2010, he was honored with France’s premier cultural award, the medallion and title of Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He was elected to the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 2012.