The first Jazz Congress co-hosted by Jazz at Lincoln Center and JazzTimes magazine Jan 11 and 12, 2018 and the 14th annual Winter JazzFest Marathon produced in downtown Manhattan Jan 12 and 13, offered contrasts and prompted crosstalk. It wasn’t like these were conventions of different parties, but different narratives were going down. The Congress’s sessions […]
She plays like a girl? That’s hot — and cool!
Women are making future jazz history — despite seldom showing up in top high school band competitions. My new column in City Arts – New York’s Review of Culture, has local names and immediate dates; jazz gender parity is a slow movement but my bet is it’s irreversible.
What do women want (of jazz clubs)?
Why don’t women feel welcome as jazz listeners? My posting hit a nerve with Facebook “friends” and commentors including ArtsJournal’s Mind the Gap blog, which takes up the issue of “comfort when it comes to experiencing art” and rightly understands I was thinking more about “psychic comfort” than anything limited to the physical. What about […]
Life’s a pitch: Where are the women jazz listeners?
Amanda Ameer, blogger behind artjournal’s Life’s a Pitch, was bummed by the low number of women at pianist Brad Mehldau’s recent Village Vanguard performance (but glad about the audience’s wide age-spread). She cites jazz women instrumentalists as being rare, too. What’s up with this, she wants to know. Send her “the literature on this topic.” […]

