Bio : Terri Lyne Carrington

This fall, award-winning NEA Jazz Master, drummer, bandleader, producer, composer and inter-disciplinary artist Terri Lyne Carrington will expand on her pioneering work in the jazz and gender justice space with an unprecedented, multi-disciplinary project advocating for the history and future of women, trans and non-binary artists in jazz.

The initiative is headlined by a new album of 11 pieces all composed by women titled new STANDARDS - Vol. 1, which will be released September 16 on the storied, newly-relaunched Candid label. The album’s tracklist includes some of the 101 songs Carrington has selected for a groundbreaking sheet music book New Standards, which includes nearly a century’s worth of jazz compositions by women and will be published by Hal Leonard on September 15.  The final piece will be an extensive installation and exhibition at Detroit’s Carr Center this October dedicated to reshaping our understanding of jazz and gender both throughout history and moving forward into the future.

New Standards is just the latest chapter in Carrington’s advocacy, a facet of her larger Jazz Without Patriarchy Project and work as the founder and artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. “When the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice had our opening celebration in 2018, I asked students to play some songs written by women from the Real Book,” Carrington says, alluding to the classic Hal Leonard collection of standards. “Nobody could find any other than ‘Willow Weep For Me.’ That's when I decided to make a collection of compositions by women composers our first initiative.”

The album new STANDARDS Vol. 1, produced by Terri Lyne Carrington and Matthew Stevens, features a core band comprised of Carrington (drums), Kris Davis (piano), Linda May Han Oh (bass), Nicholas Payton (trumpet) and Stevens (guitar). This recording is “Vol. 1”,  the first in an ambitious series: Carrington’s eventual goal is to record all 101 pieces in the new songbook that she’s created. The star-studded record includes appearances by Ambrose Akinmusire, Melanie Charles, Ravi Coltrane, Val Jeanty, Samara Joy, Julian Lage, Michael Mayo, Elena Pinderhughes, Dianne Reeves, Negah Santos and Somi. In producing the sessions, Carrington chose to give listeners a sense of this project’s vast range. Song selections include harpist Brandee Younger’s “Respected Destroyer,” clarinetist Anat Cohen’s “Ima,” vocalist Abbey Lincoln’s “Throw It Away” as well as pieces by Gretchen Parlato, Carla Bley and more.  The recordings - which range from ballads to experimental compositions - are adventurous and explore the limitless universe of jazz.

The new book’s selections, intended to compensate for the woefully few pieces by women, trans and non-binary composers that are typically taught in jazz education programs, span 99 years of jazz history, starting with a 1922 composition by Lil Hardin Armstrong and stretching into 2021, with some new songs that were commissioned for the book. Icons including Mary Lou Williams, Alice Coltrane and Geri Allen are accompanied by newer faces like Elena Pinderhughes and Cecile McLorin Salvant. As or more important than the familiar names and pieces, though, are the obscurities that Carrington worked to uncover and spotlight before they were completely lost to history. “If a song kind of stayed in my brain or haunted me, I figured that was an indication that it was a good one,” Carrington said, explaining that the book’s selections passed that test. Overall, New Standards is designed to put a new spotlight on the often under acknowledged work of these women — one that stretches far beyond their gender and insists on the kind of relevance to the canon as a whole that they have too long been denied.

That larger mission is part of the focus of Carrington’s installation at the Carr Center, where she is also the artistic director, this October. Entitled Shifting the Narrative: Jazz and Gender Justice, the installation will feature art by Cecile McLorin Salvant, Jazzmeia Horn, Carmen Lundy and many others, as well as live performances at the center and around the city (which will also, in turn, incorporate some New Standards), a film, and panel discussions on the idea of “new standards” as well as the installation’s three other guiding themes: The Female and Non-binary Gaze, Invisible Labor, and Geri Allen and Mary Lou Williams In Conversation. The installation will run through November, with programming throughout designed to engage with the city of Detroit.

Carrington has countless accolades and impressive critical acclaim to show for her decades as one of jazz’s most accomplished and respected musicians. But her advocacy for equality has been a consistent current through her work onstage and in the studio. From 2011’s GRAMMY-winning Mosaic Project album which featured an impressive array of Carrington’s women colleagues (as well as its 2016 sequel), through her work alongside the late legend Geri Allen and Esperanza Spalding in their ACS Trio, and as the founder and artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, Carrington has steadily pushed the jazz world towards greater inclusivity and acceptance — in large part by making it inextricable from extraordinary music. Waiting Game, Carrington’s epic 2019 double album with her critically-acclaimed band Social Science, offered expansive social commentary within its stunning, provocative sounds that effectively conveyed the interconnectedness of gender discrimination, racism, and all forms of bigotry and inequality. That release earned a GRAMMY nomination, a New York Times profile and an NPR Tiny Desk concert performance.

In the midst of the many layers of her Jazz Without Patriarchy work, Carrington will also be releasing her 2017 performance alongside Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding at the Detroit Jazz Festival as a new album, Live From the Detroit Jazz Festival, which is due out on Candid Records (where Carrington is an A&R consultant) on September 9. But juggling endless responsibilities at Berklee, within the music industry, and as an artist is nothing compared to the scale of the change Carrington has spent years working towards.

“We're asking for new standards, and that goes way beyond just the songs,” Carrington says. “Nobody has a monopoly on creativity, or improvisation. We're looking for a completely different approach and understanding — a different and more inclusive way to experience the music without gender bias'.”