Bill Banfield is a Berklee College of Music professor emeritus. In 2022, he joined Longy School of Music and is the founder and director of the recording label Jazz Urbane. He’s also the first Senior Scholar in Residence at Longy School of Music of Bard College.

Accolades

Jazzman Bill Banfield Receives President’s Call to Service Award

STH alum has had a lifelong devotion to making the connection between music, education, and spirituality

Over the past 20 years, only a select few have earned the President’s Call to Service Award. Colloquially known as the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the honor is bestowed upon those who have committed to lives of community service through education, innovation, or volunteerism. It is the highest designation of the President’s Volunteer Service Award.

On a Friday evening in October, Bill Banfield (STH’88) received the award in a ceremony at Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain. An accomplished composer, jazz guitarist, conductor, arranger, and recording artist, Banfield has been serving the community since his years as an undergraduate at New England Conservatory (NEC); at just 19 years of age, he accepted an offer to teach in the Boston Public Schools.

On hand for the ceremony at the church were colleagues representing the breadth of Banfield’s impact over more than four decades in and around Boston. In 2005 he was the founding director of the Africana studies department at Berklee College of Music, where he is now a professor emeritus. In 2022, he joined Longy School of Music of Bard College as its first Senior Scholar in Residence. He is the founder and director of the recording label Jazz Urbane as well as the Jazz Urbane Cafe, a forthcoming restaurant and performance space in Roxbury’s Nubian Square.

“It was quite a collection of folks,” Banfield says of the event. “It was wonderful.”

Led by Pastors Ray Hammond (Hon.’99) and Gloria White-Hammond (CAS’72, Hon.’09), Bethel AME is Banfield’s home church. “I’m the exhorter for the AME church in this region,” he says, referring to one who uses his talents to teach and encourage members.

The evening included performances by the Boston Arts Academy Choir and the full version of Banfield’s own Imagine Orchestra (“It was a beefy group,” Banfield says, “with strings and bassoons, trumpets, trombones—the whole bit”), which featured special guest Najee, the renowned saxophonist who was Banfield’s mentor at NEC. 

There was a video message from the church Elder and testimonial statements from Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West, two of Banfield’s many admirers. President Joe Biden’s explanation of the meaning of the award was especially moving.

“Hearing Biden’s words about bringing light, life, and redemption to the work—I had to fight back my tears to make sure I kept my composure,” Banfield recalls.

Putting into practice his lifelong devotion to making the connection between music, education, and spirituality for more than 30 years, Banfield has taught a curriculum he built, called the Theology of American Popular Music, at colleges across the country. In addition, he has served as a research associate with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and three times as a Pulitzer Prize judge in American music.

The Call to Service Award was established by President George W. Bush in 2003, with honorees typically welcomed to the White House. Recipients are required to have logged at least 4,000 hours of community service, although that figure, Banfield says, is less important than the overarching “narrative of one’s work.”

After a hiatus during the last presidency, the Biden administration reinstated the awards in 2021, with a catch: owing to the COVID pandemic, recent ceremonies have been held in each recipient’s hometown to minimize travel.

Having the ceremony hosted at Bethel AME made it particularly meaningful, Banfield says. “Had it been in Washington, D.C., nobody in the audience would have known you.” Here, every time he looked around the audience, he saw more familiar faces: “It really hit home, because it was on the soil where I did a lot of the work,” he says.

“We’re learning that the value of our humanness is worth celebrating,” Banfield says. “That’s what the pandemic taught us, or at least that’s what we’re hoping.”