Seattle Times:
The first Golden Ear/Seattle Jazz Awards were presented in 1990 in a setting far from ostentatious. Singer Ernestine Anderson was among four artists inducted that year into the freshly created “Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame” before a small crowd that had gathered in the upstairs bar of Lofurno’s jazz club, across from the railroad tracks at Interbay. The venues have changed over the years, from Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley, to Experience Music Project, to the New Orleans Creole Restaurant, to the Triple Door, where tonight at 7, Earshot Jazz will present its annual jazz awards for the 19th consecutive year. Polished though the surroundings might be, the sense and scale of the 2008 Golden Ear awards remain much the same. It is a chance to visit with old friends and to measure progress, a night of personal stocktaking and private celebration.