Inexhaustible drummer, producer and composer Terry Lyne Carrington’s latest multidisciplinary project was born from a revelation.
Founder and Artistic Director Carrington Berklee Jazz and Gender Justicewas planning an event for an organization that mentors jazz-learning musicians with gender equality as its guiding principle, and was looking for works by female composers. However, finding the sheet music was difficult.
“So it really showed a big problem,” she said on a recent video call, wearing two-tone rectangular glasses. Women are composers.” However, she is not entirely aware that her study of jazz and jazz composition is based on “material written entirely by men.” This is an issue she tackles head-on in The New Standard: 101 Lead Sheets By Female Composers.
Today, most jazz musicians learn standards like Thelonious Monk’s “Ruby, My Dear” and Duke Ellington’s “Five O’Clock Drag” from the lead sheet. fake book. Publications that are sometimes copied (full of typos, occasional handwriting, and inconsistent fonts) contain copyrighted material obtained from dubious sources that are illegally distributed. Call it the sheet music equivalent of a bootleg mixtape.
Since the 1960s, however, as jazz has taken hold in formal college programs across the country, fake books (and their descendants, legally-issued “real books”) have become ubiquitous in classrooms. It has become more than just an educational tool. : the inclusion (and exclusion) of works by various composers has effectively codified the de facto canon of jazz.
However, Canon has a blind spot. And they aren’t always static. “Jazz musicians have always had conversations across generations and cultures,” testing the inherent resilience of music. Tammy CarnodleProfessor of Music at the University of Miami. Although bebop was not initially considered part of the jazz canon, its inclusion in early fake books in the mid-20th century cemented the style’s place in the jazz narrative. rice field. However, with the exception of “Probably Billie Holiday”, few female composers are traditionally included in fake books.
All 101 standards included in Carrington’s project were created by women between 1922 and 2021. ‘New Standards’ is published by her Hal Leonard, the same house known for the ubiquitous ‘The Real Book’ and creates many female works. These composers are easily accessible for students, educators and researchers for the first time.
“People often say, ‘I want to play some songs that women wrote, but I don’t know any of them,’ or, ‘Where are you?'” Carrington said. To demonstrate the need for the project, she shared a conversation with her editor early on.
“I don’t think he meant this, but it came out of his mouth. He said, ‘Are there really 100 female composers?'”
Carrington said he responded, “Yes, this is why we are writing this book.”
In “New Standards”, Lil Hardin Armstrong, Mary Lou Williams, Alice Coltrane, Abbey Lincoln, Jeri Allen, Dorothy Ashby, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Nicole Mitchell, Cassandra Wilson, etc. I chose a composer who encompasses all my sensibilities. Bassist, singer and composer Esperanza Spalding, a frequent collaborator with Carrington, whose work has also been featured in the project, said, “New standards like Berklee Labs are in this music called jazz.” It’s a development that reminds us that it’s very underrated.”
She added that the goal of the project was “not to shrink the canon” but to imagine what music would look like with more representation. And a model of what advocacy looks like. ”
Brooklyn-based trumpeter and composer Jamie Branch, who died last month at the age of 39, provided the collection’s only graphic score, which uses lines, shapes, images and even color to represent musical concepts. In a July interview at the studios of her record label International Anthem in Chicago, Branch explained that the role of songwriting is to guide the band as they “move together through the waters of sound.” Did.
A die-hard improviser, she believed that music could not be contained solely on lined paper using traditional musical notation. “I think all the music in the world is above us and exists in this cloud,” she said. “And when we play it back, or hear it, or hear it in our brains, we’re pulling it out, passing it through synapses and so on, and then putting it back in.”
Carrington acknowledged that there was some pushback about including the graphics score. “We have to keep pushing people to look forward,” she said. “Otherwise, that’s how this stuff stays very stagnant. That’s what’s great about Jamie. She was a rebel.” I don’t have a girlfriend, so I need someone like her.
Carrington’s album, New Standards Vol. 1, features selections from “new standards” texts that reflect what she calls “various styles within jazz” represented in the book. increase. ‘Circling’ by Gretchen Perlath, ‘Wind Flower’ by Sarah Cassie, ‘Respected Destroyer’ by Brandi Younger and more.
The album was recorded with a solid core band of Carrington on drums, Nicholas Peyton on trumpet, Chris Davis on piano, Matthew Stevens on guitar and Linda May Hung Oh on bass. The quintet performed with a series of features, including the lilting “Wind Flower” by flautist Elena Pinderhughes and guitarist Julian Lage, and the sensual vocals of “Slow It Away” by Melanie Charles and Somi. further fleshed out. The slinky song was first included on Lincoln’s 1995 album “Painted Lady,” which he co-produced with Archie His Shep.
So far, Carrington said he’s gotten mostly positive reactions to the “New Standard” project from staunch jazz stakeholders. “They’re like, ‘Wow, I guess I never really thought about that.’ That’s what I hear most,” she said. “I didn’t really think about it until the last decade or so, so I’ll be specific.”
She noted that the open-minded response was in part a result of the nature of the music itself. Many people don’t want to be left behind, so they try to look at things a little differently. She resonated with the concept of Sankofa in Ghana. This suggests a balance between us teaching the past and encouraging people to “change the present to obtain a future that will last for itself.”
“It feels like there are many editions,” she added, reflecting Spalding’s wish that the project end as “one of many,” or just the beginning of imagining a more inclusive jazz canon. Did. Hopefully, Carrington said, “there will be someone to hold the reins to create version 2.”