John Edward Hasse is an educator, musician, and award-winning author and record producer. He serves as Curator of American Music at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Named "Ellington's best biographer" by The Washington Post, he is the author of the acclaimed Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, to which Wynton Marsalis contributed the foreword. Hasse is also the producer of an Ellington CD boxed set and the curator of three Smithsonian exhibitions on Ellington.