NEA Jazz Master Terri Lyne Carrington is an indomitable force when she has a pair of drum sticks in her hand. The three-time Grammy Award winning drummer, composer and educator has shared the stage with fellow greats like Herbie Hancock, Cassandra Wilson, Al Jarreau and Esperanza Spalding and has been banging out since she began her professional career at only 10 years old and received a full scholarship to Berklee College of Music at the age of 11.
Carrington, the first female artist to ever win the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, which she received for her 2013 work Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue, has recorded eight albums throughout her illustrious career.
In 2019, she and her band, Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science, released their debut project Waiting Game, which brings to light many current social justice issues through music. Carrington and the band have been touring jazz festivals since the summer as COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. Carrington recently spoke with rolling out about her upcoming projects and plans for the new year.
Tell us about your new project and book you have coming out.
I’ll be recording a new album in December called New Standards that will be honoring women composers. It’s a book that I’ll be putting out through Berklee. It’s a 101 lead sheets of women composers. It’s a compilation of all these songs because what we have is The Real Book that jazz musicians use to learn songs, students especially. But when I look through it, there are very few songs written by women. So I’m creating an alternative so this album will be New Standards Vol. 1. Because it’s a 101 songs in the book so we’ll 10-12 on the first album and my goal is to eventually record all of them.
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