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Today, Next Jazz Legacy is proud to announce the seven emerging women and non-binary jazz musicians who comprise its 2023 cohort of awardees. The trailblazing program was created by New Music USA and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice to address gender and racial inequities by providing mentorship and professional development opportunities to those who have been underrepresented in jazz. The program receives major funding from the Mellon Foundation and support from Joseph A. and Nancy Meli Walker.
Combining individual and group learning opportunities with a comprehensive support package designed to deliver deep impacts on every candidate's career, Next Jazz Legacy champions those whose access to resources has been limited. With gender and racial justice as guiding principles, this group of Next Jazz Legacy awardees was chosen through an open call process and a meticulous, months-long review process by a distinguished and diverse panel of jazz luminaries, chaired by NEA Jazz Master and Next Jazz Legacy's Artistic Director, Terri Lyne Carrington. Once the seven awardees were selected, Carrington and the Next Jazz Legacy team worked closely with each of the seven musicians to match them with a pair of master bandleaders for a year-long performance apprenticeship, as well as an additional creative mentorship, both aligned with the awardees' unique interests.
Alongside Terri Lyne Carrington, the selection committee for the 2023 Next Jazz Legacy cohort included JD Allen, Tanya Darby, Caroline Davis, Carlos Henriquez, Brian Lynch, Allison Miller, Rufus Reid, Matthew Stevens, Camille Thurman, and more. Over the next three years, Next Jazz Legacy will be guided by an advisory board that includes artists Gerald Clayton and Kris Davis, and representatives from institutions such as Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, NPR, WBGO, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, New York Winter Jazz Festival, and beyond.
The second class of seven Next Jazz Legacy artists spans a wide spectrum of genres, instruments, and trajectories, with personal experiences of confronting the challenges of sexism, socio-economic status, and opportunity. This year's cohort members are:
Camila Cortina Bello
Piano
Apprenticeship With Miguel Zenón
Creative Mentorship With Helen Sung
Through her music, Camila Cortina pays homage to her Cuban heritage. Having relocated to Boston from Havana, she continues to re-imagine the sounds and rhythms of her Cuban roots through the lens of jazz, classical, and world music. Camila considers herself an advocate for women in jazz and enjoys promoting other female composers' work in her concerts. She has also received multiple recognitions, including the First Prize in Jojazz Contest (2007), the Duke Ellington Award (2020), and the Matt Marvuglio Award (2022), among others.
Milena Casado
Trumpet, Flugelhorn
Apprenticeship With Nicholas Payton
Creative Mentorship With Meshell Ndegeocello
Originally from Spain and currently based in New York, Milena Casado is a composer, flugelhorn, and trumpet player who has worked with the likes of Terri Lyne Carrington, Kenny Werner, Kris Davis, Melissa Aldana, Jorge Rossy, Ben Street, George Garzone, and Francisco Mela. She has performed at noted venues and festivals around the world, including the Monterey Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, and Marciac Jazz Festival among others, and is currently composing original music, and sharing it in different settings, which include the Milena Casado trio, quartet, sextet and nonet.
Liany Mateo
Bass
Apprenticeship With Regina Carter
Creative Mentorship With Christian McBride
Bassist Liany Mateo has traveled across North America, Japan, Africa, and the Middle-East performing, touring, and teaching music. Influenced by a mix of hard-hitting straight-ahead swing, free avante garde, and music with deep pocket groove, she plays all over NYC and most recently, in Arturo O’Farrill’s Grammy Award-winning Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra. She has performed with musicians such as Geoffrey Keezer, Fay Victor, and Brandee Younger, and was mentored by Rodney Whitaker and Linda May Han Oh.
Anaïs Maviel
Voice
Apprenticeship With Craig Taborn
Creative Mentorship With Nicole Mitchell
Anaïs Maviel is a Harlem-based vocalist and composer whose music shows traditional and experimental musical knowledge. Her music navigates song, choral, instrumental music and staging with a strong connection to cosmologies of sound and speech rooted in oral traditions such as mantra and ring shout. She has conducted scholarly research on music & utopia in Black American music and interviewed master musicians. She also collaborated with William Parker, Meshell Ndegeocello, Pauline Kim Harris, Alarm Will Sound, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Stefani Jemison, among many others.
Tatiana LadyMay Mayfield
Voice
Apprenticeship With Brandee Younger
Creative Mentorship With Patrice Rushen
From the age of 13, Tatiana Mayfield has been singing and performing Jazz music at festivals all across the United States and around the world. Some highlights of her career include performing with the legendary Cincinnati POPS Orchestra, having a #1 song on the UK Soul Chart, and being awarded 2nd place in the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocals Competition at NJPAC. As an educator, Mayfield is an adjunct instructor of jazz voice for the University Of North Texas in Denton, Texas and an adjunct professor of commercial voice at Cedar Valley College in Lancaster, TX.
Neta Raanan
Saxophone
Apprenticeship With Nasheet Waits
Creative Mentorship With Moor Mother
Neta Raanan is a tenor saxophonist and composer who grew up in New Jersey and found her love for music as a teenager in the record stores of New York, drawn to the mysterious black and white photos of Bird and Dizzy, Thelonious Monk, and Lester Young perched on the walls. Since receiving her Master's in Music, she has collaborated with artists from a wide range of genres, ranging from jazz to avant garde, to folk music to accompanying hip-hop artists and singer/songwriters, and mixed medium productions.
Anisha Rush
Saxophone
Apprenticeship With Makaya McCraven
Creative Mentorship With Tia Fuller
Anisha Rush, born and raised in Colorado Springs, CO, began playing the saxophone at the young age of 10 and immediately developed an interest in jazz and gospel music. Anisha actively performs as bandleader of the Anisha Rush Quartet. She has also played alongside Ron Miles, Dawn Clement, Shane Endsley, Art Lande, Greg Gisbert, Annie Booth, and more, and is an active member and educator in the Denver music scene.
Co-founded by New Music USA President & CEO Vanessa Reed and Terri Lyne Carrington, NEA Jazz Master and founder of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, Next Jazz Legacy made a remarkable impact over its first year of existence as NJL’s inaugural cohort of awardees gained invaluable experiences to aid in their artistic development. The program is generously funded by the Mellon Foundation, with support from Joseph A. and Nancy Meli Walker.
As the involvement of Carrington — who was just awarded a GRAMMY Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album for her 2023 album new STANDARDS Vol. 1 —attests, Next Jazz Legacy is supported by some of jazz’s most acclaimed names. In 2022, the program arranged apprenticeships under distinguished jazz icons including Esperanza Spalding, Lizz Wright, Marcus Miller, Mary Halvorson, Tia Fuller, Linda May Han Oh, and Chris Potter. Wayne Shorter, Bobby McFerrin, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Brandon Ross, Bill Stewart, Kris Davis and Jen Shyu were also brought in by NJL to provide creative mentorship. Samara Joy — who was just awarded the GRAMMY for Best New Artist — even led a seminar on best social media practices for young musicians.
Throughout 2022, awardees performed on prestigious stages at local and national jazz events throughout the country, including at Winter Jazzfest 2023, the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival and as part of a specialLivestream Concert produced by WBGO. The new cohort will make their live performance debut as a group at the Kennedy Center in May, more details to come. They are also slated to perform at DC Jazz Festival, and Angel City Jazz Fest, with more in the works throughout the year. 2023 NJL Awardee Tatiana LadyMay Mayfield has been scheduled to perform alongside mentor Brandee Younger at SOLD OUT show in Public Records, Brooklyn on Friday, April 7th at 7PM.
Watch a recent profile of Next Jazz Legacy on PBS NewsHour HERE.
Each Next Jazz Legacy artist benefits from a comprehensive package designed to have a deep and lasting career impact. This includes a $10,000 grant, a one-year performance apprenticeship, a two-way mentorship program pairing them with artistic and business professionals, peer-learning cohorts led by Carrington, an online learning course from Berklee, and a variety of promotional opportunities to live showcases with national presenters and more. The NJL program is managed by New York City-based emerging guitarist, composer and educator Lolivone de la Rosa. Any questions about the program should be addressed to de la Rosa at nextjazzlegacy@newmusicusa.org.
Says new awardee Tatiana LadyMay Mayfield:
“I’m very excited to be a part of the 2023 Next Jazz Legacy Cohort because I will have the opportunity to build fellowship with and be motivated by extraordinary women and nonbinary musicians from across the jazz spectrum. I’m looking forward to performing with musicians who have inspired me throughout my journey, as well as having them as mentors….Being a part of this apprenticeship program allows me to show my students and other young women in my community that our talents are recognized, important, and appreciated.”
Vanessa Reed, Next Jazz Legacy co-founder and President & CEO of New Music USA, shares:
“Next Jazz Legacy unites leading artists of all genders in a program which highlights and responds to the immense inequities that have existed in jazz since its beginning. Feedback from the women and non-binary musicians who were supported in our first year confirm that our package of financial support, mentoring, and cohort learning has generated unique opportunities, including a wealth of new connections that will support them long after the program has ended. I could not be more proud to continue this important work and I am hugely grateful to the many inspirational musicians who have contributed as mentors, band leaders and advisors alongside our Artistic Director, Terri Lyne Carrington.”
Terri Lyne Carrington, Next Jazz Legacy co-founder and Artistic Director, and founder and Artistic Director of Berklee Institute for Jazz & Gender Justice adds:
“I’m very pleased with our selections for this year’s Next Jazz Legacy awardees! We strive to amplify women and non-binary musicians’ voices and address the need for all musicians, practitioners, and professionals in jazz to contribute to a more equitable jazz future. I am both hopeful and confident that jazz is developing progressively toward this end. This is why this program is exciting and the future possibilities of the sound of jazz is exciting as well."
To accompany the second cohort of seven awardees, the program has also revealed 17 semi-finalists who were put forward to the final stage of the selection process by the Next Jazz Legacy panelists. They will receive a cohort gathering and promotion through Next Jazz Legacy channels. The semi-finalists are Anna Abondolo, Miranda Agnew, Layale Chaker, Estar Cohen, Julieta Eugenio, Lily Finnegan, Tammy Huynh, Arta Jekabsone, Maya Keren, Hannah Marks, Nicole McCabe, Ciara Moser, Naomi Nakanishi, Elsa Nilsson, Caili O'Doherty, Francesca Remigi, and Jenny Xu.
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