Renowned jazz bassist, educator, bandleader, and composer Marion Hayden nearly fainted in December while eating sushi at Noble Fish in Clawson. She had just finished a busy morning and was exhausted. Lunch at her favorite sushi spot was her perfect way to unwind, but Katie McGowan, the deputy director at Kresge Arts in Detroit, interrupted Hayden’s me time with the news she had been selected as the 2025 Kresge Eminent Artist — an award that comes with a $100,000 prize.
“Katie goes, ‘Do you have time to chat, and are you sitting down?’” Hayden recalls. “Once I found out the news, I think I said ‘what’ about 10 times, and then I got dizzy and leaned up against a shelf, so I did have to sit down.”
Hayden says she didn’t think anything of the call at first because she’s been asked to do performances with Kresge before, and as a 2016 Kresge Fellow, had done work associated with Kresge Arts Detroit.
“It was very fabulous news to get and very humbling to think they thought of me,” she says. “It was a lot to take in and it felt so wonderful to think that they noticed my work over the period of time that I’ve been working here in Detroit.”
The Kresge Eminent Artist Award honors artists with a distinguished record of high-quality work, professional achievement in the arts, and a lifetime of contributions to their art forms and the cultural community of metro Detroit. Later this year Hayden will be the subject of a short film and will be honored by Kresge during a special ceremony.
Hayden is the youngest Kresge Eminent Artist at age 68 and the second recipient to have also received a Kresge Artist Fellowship. She is also the third jazz musician to have received the honor; preceding her was trumpeter Marcus Belgrave (2009) and saxophonist Wendell Harrison (2018), who both mentored her.
Trombonist, bandleader, and educator Vincent Chandler, a panelist for the Kresge Eminent Artist selection, says this is great timing for Hayden to have received this award.
“One of the things we talked about as panelists was the timing of someone receiving such an incredible award,” says Chandler in a Kresge statement. “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.’’
This honor is fitting given Hayden’s industriousness and work ethic. For three decades, she has been one of the most in-demand jazz musicians in Michigan. She lists off what appears to be an overwhelming amount of upcoming performances, which she plays off as an average month for her.
On Feb. 1, she will perform a live musical score she was commissioned to compose for a Detroit Institute of Arts screening of The Symbol of the Unconquered, a 1920 Oscar Micheaux silent film. On Feb. 13, also at the DIA, she will pay tribute to drummer Roy Brooks, performing music from his groundbreaking ensemble Artistic Truth. Near the end of the month, she starts a residency at the University of Iowa with their jazz studies department.
Spreading the gospel of Detroit jazz
In addition to her performances, Hayden teaches at the University of Michigan. There she’s the Geri Allen Collegiate Lecturer in the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation (a position named after another lauded Detroit jazz musician, now deceased, of Hayden’s generation); at Oakland University she’s an applied instructor of jazz bass.
Hayden admits that early in her career, she didn’t envision teaching. She believed being a side woman would consume the bulk of her professional life. That mindset changed, however, when her mentors Kenn Cox, Roy Brooks, and Marcus Belgrave passed away. She felt a sense of duty continuing their legacies, performing their music, and refining the mentoring systems they built.
“When that happened, it occurred to me that the ball was in my court,” she says. “I felt like those musicians had really poured a lot of music into me and at that point it was my duty to keep that legacy alive. The spirit of their music in particular and the spirit in which they engaged in the community as creators of music.”
She adds, “The reason why we have such a rich landscape of young musicians here is because everybody didn’t run out of here to New York. And I understand people going there but we were very fortunate here in Detroit that we had such a deep wellspring of people deeply rooted in the music and they were able to instill those kinds of values about music in us.”
‘It’s truly a blessing’
During the formative leg of her career, Hayden made a name for herself as a go-to accompanist for jazz masters Donald Walden, Cox, Harrison, and Brooks. In their bands her unique brand of walking the upright bass was honed note by note. It wasn’t long after she had achieved household name status that nationally known bandleaders hired her.
She blessed bands led by Dee Dee Bridgewater, Kirk Lightsey, Steve Turre, Jon Faddis, Kamau Kenyatta, and Terri Lyne Carrington. An encyclopedia-sized book would be needed to list all the bands and ensembles in which she has performed.
On the home front, she co-founded Straight Ahead, a 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 a few all-female jazz groups to record for a major label since the big band era. The Grammy-nominated band continues to lead performances all over Michigan and beyond and is a fan favorite at Detroit-area venues such as Cliff Bells and The Dirty Dog Jazz Café.
As a bandleader, Hayden released Visions in 2009 and her ensemble Legacy gained a cult-like following. Through Legacy, which performs primarily original works, she’s received national and local grants supporting its focus on narrative and often historically driven suites of music.
As a composer, she’s written more than 60 works, including Ocean: The Life and Times of Phillis Wheatley, a suite based on the life of the eponymous poet who, during the colonial era, became the first African American to publish a book.
Her endeavors have expanded beyond music to include work for community arts organizations, serving 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.
Just a few of the accolades she has received throughout her career are the 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.
She doesn’t take any recognition for granted. Through her compositions, performances, and lectures, Hayden continues to be a vessel for generations of creative people.
“I know people my age and younger who didn’t make it through the pandemic so I’m just truly grateful to be here,” she says. “It never occurred to me that I would receive anything of this magnitude at this point in my life and it’s truly a blessing.”
