Celebrating 40 years in music, NEA Jazz Master and three-time Grammy award-winning drummer, producer and educator, Terri Lyne Carrington will bring a special performance to the 12th John Coltrane International Jazz and Blues Festival on Sunday, Sept. 3, 2023.
Terri Lyne Carrington and Friends Tribute Alice Coltrane and other women composers, featuring Lisa Fischer, Brandee Younger, Michael Mayo, Nicole Mitchell and Michelle Coltrane
Terri Lyne Carrington started her professional career in Massachusetts at 10 years-old when she became the youngest person to receive a union card in Boston. After studying under a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music, Carrington worked as an in-demand musician in New York City, and later moved to Los Angeles, where she gained recognition on late night TV as the house drummer for both the Arsenio Hall Show and Quincy Jones’ VIBE TV show, hosted by Sinbad.
EARLY PROMISE
While still in her 20’s, she toured extensively with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, among others. In 2011 Terri Lyne Carrington released the Grammy Award-winning album, The Mosaic Project, featuring a cast of all-star women instrumentalists and vocalists. In 2013 she released, Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue, which also earned a Grammy Award, establishing her as the first woman ever to win in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category.
Terri Lyne Carrington was granted The Doris Duke Artist Award in 2019, a prestigious acknowledgment in recognition of her past and ongoing contributions to jazz music. Also in 2019, her collaborative project, Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science (formed with Aaron Parks and Matthew Stevens), released their album, Waiting Game, inspired by the seismic changes in the ever-evolving social and political landscape. The album was nominated for a 2021 Grammy and was celebrated as one of that year’s best jazz releases by Rolling Stone, Downbeat, Boston Globe and Popmatters. It also garnered three of their critics poll awards, Album of the Year, Group of the Year and Artist of the Year. Terri Lyne Carrington was also named Artist of the Year by Jazz Times Critics Polls, the Boston Globe, and the Jazz Journalists Association.
JUSTICE ADVOCATE
Ms. Carrington has received honorary doctorates from Manhattan School of Music, York University and Berklee College of Music, where she currently serves as the Founder and Artistic Director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, which recruits, teaches, mentors, and advocates for musicians seeking to study jazz with racial justice and gender justice as guiding principles.
A curator and activist, Terri Lyne Carrington authored what has been hailed as an important book in 2022. “New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets By Women Composers” features compositions from a range of acknowledged female titans, young visionaries and unsung heroes in jazz. Accompanying the book is her album, new STANDARDS vol. 1, featuring 11 selections from the songbook with an all-star band. The ambitious new project was created to shine a light on women composers in historic new ways. The album, which ranges from ballads to experimental compositions, is timely and adventurous, exploring the multiverse of jazz.
Terri Lyne Carrington
Terri Lyne Carrington serves as co-executive producer and musical director for the newly formed Jazz Music Awards and is a 2022 inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
