modern jazz artists influenced carla bley

Here’s a batch of new releases that promise hours of rewarding listening.ġ. This year there’s a forthcoming deluge of new releases by talented women jazz artists, all accomplished players, prolific composers and energetic bandleaders. Last summer saw the premiere of the powerhouse all-female jazz group Artemis (named after the Greek goddess of the hunt) featuring pianist Renee Rosnes, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, clarinetist Anat Cohen, bassist Noriko Ueda, drummer Allison Miller and special guest vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant. Mary Halvorson, one of the most riveting guitarist-composers to come along in the last decade, earned similar accolades for her double album, Code Girl. Last year, pianist-composer Myra Melford earned accolades for her band Snow Egret’s 2018 release The Other Side of Air, which appeared on many critics’ year-end lists. In recent years, jazz has welcomed a wave of new faces to the scene, all of whom are standing on the shoulders of pioneering women artists like pianist-composers Lil Hardin, Mary Lou Williams, Marian McPartland, Carla Bley, Eliane Elias, Renee Rosnes and Geri Allen, guitarists Mary Osborne and Emily Remler, trumpeters Valaida Snow and Clora Bryant, soprano saxophonists Jane Ira Bloom and Jane Bunnett, trombonist-arranger Melba Liston, big-band leaders Toshiko Akiyoshi, Maria Schneider and others. This list was compiled not because these artists are women, but because they are talented players who are key to the futures of jazz and improvised music and deserve representation. As with other strands of #MeToo-induced activism across industries, it’s not as if women weren’t in jazz before now-they’re just finally being given a voice.

A year earlier, the Women in Jazz Foundation began their efforts to provide a voice for women and non-binary individuals within the historically male-dominated genre. This arrived in the wake of #MeToo and following mass exposure to instances of sexism and misogyny in jazz. Last year, a group of female and non-binary jazz musicians founded the We Have Voice Collective, an organization that aims to “foster awareness, inclusion, and the creation of safe( r ) spaces for all” in jazz and improvised music scenes.

Modern jazz artists influenced carla bley