NEC Perspectives Forum Panel Discussion: Gender in Jazz
Join us for a Zoom discussion on Gender in Jazz on Monday, March 14 at 5:00 p.m. NEC’s Director of Cultural Equity and Belonging Monique VanWillingh will be joined by NEC student Zoe Murphy, NEC faculty member Melissa Aldana, NEC alum and Equity in Jazz Team Leader at the University of Sydney Jo Lawry and NEC Jazz Studies Department Chair, Ken Schaphorst.
Bios
Zoe Murphy
Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Zoe Murphy is a trumpet player, composer, and educator. Zoe is dedicated to perfecting her craft and positively impacting her audiences, students, and colleagues through her music.
Zoe regularly performs with top tier ensembles, and works with notable musicians in the jazz community, including in-demand artists, Walter Smith III, John Raymond, Wayne Wallace, Greg Ward, Ambrose Akinmusire and Jerry Hey.
In addition to jazz and improvisation, Zoe is versatile within the R&B, Soul, pop, reggae, avant garde, and classical realms. Her original and innovative compositions reflect this flexibility, blurring the lines between genres, while also focusing on making music that incorporates a fresh take on modern jazz and instrumental music.
Zoe is pursuing a Master’s degree in Jazz Performance at the New England Conservatory of Music, studying with Jason Palmer and John McNeil. Zoe also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Jazz Studies from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, under the instruction of John Raymond and Joey Tartell.
Jo Lawry
https://www.sydney.edu.au/music/about/our-people/academic-staff/jo-lawry.html?
Dr. Jo Lawry joined the Conservatorium in 2021 as Jazz Equity Team Leader, a role designed to encourage and support women and gender diverse musicians in their careers in jazz through dedicated leadership and music development activities. Jo is a vocalist and composer who has been on faculty at New England Conservatory (Boston) and Manhattan School of Music (New York). She has been a Teaching Artist-in-Residence at Frost School of Music (Miami) and the University of North Texas.
Jo grew up on an almond farm in South Australia and, after a brief flirtation with operatic study, began her formal instruction in jazz at Elder Conservatorium in South Australia. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study her Masters Degree in New York, has worked with Carnegie Hall as a featured artist in their ‘Musical Connections’ program, and served as Artist-in-Residence at the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Jo’s debut album I Want to Be Happy was named one of the “Best CDs of the Decade” by Downbeat Magazine. Jo is the vocalist for the Fred Hersch Pocket Orchestra, a quartet whose album, Live at Jazz Standard was released on Sunnyside Records. Jo has also been featured as a guest on numerous modern jazz recordings; stand-outs include Dr. Lonnie Smith’s album Rise Up! and Kate McGarry’s Grammy-nominated If Less is More... Nothing is Everything.
Jo has become well-known beyond jazz circles for her work with Sting, with whom she has toured and recorded since 2009, and more recently with Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel. In 2013, Jo was featured in the film 20 Feet From Stardom, which chronicled the lives and careers of “the backup singers behind some of the greatest musical legends of the 21st century” and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
During the 17 years Jo lived in New York, she also led her own band, and released an album of originals, Taking Pictures, in March 2015. The follow-up, The Bathtub and the Sea was released in 2018.
Melissa Aldana
https://www.melissaaldana.net/about
GRAMMY-nominated saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana joins the Blue Note Records family with the release of 12 Stars, her debut album as a leader for the legendary Jazz label. At 33, the Brooklyn-based tenor player from Santiago, Chile has garnered international recognition for her visionary work as a band leader, as well as her deeply meditative interpretation of language and vocabulary.
12 Stars grapples with concepts of childrearing, familial forgiveness, acceptance, and self-love. “This is a really important album for me,” says Aldana. “I felt like I had so much to say because of all the experiences I had during 2020. After the personal process I went through last year, I feel more connected to myself and my own imperfections — and I’ve discovered that it’s the same process with music. Embracing everything I hear, everything I play — even mistakes — is more meaningful than perfection.”
Aldana was one of the founding members of ARTEMIS, the all-star collective that released their self-titled debut on Blue Note in 2020. The album featured Aldana’s simmering composition “Frida,” which was dedicated to Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, who inspired the musician through “her own process of finding self-identity through art.”
Kahlo was also the subject of Aldana’s celebrated 2019 album Visions (Motéma), which earned the saxophonist her first-ever GRAMMY nomination for Best Improvised Jazz Solo, an acknowledgment of her impressive tenor solo on her composition “Elsewhere.” In naming Visions among the best albums of 2019 for NPR Music, critic Nate Chinen wrote that Aldana “has the elusive ability to balance technical achievement against a rich emotional palette.”
Aldana was born in Santiago, Chile, and grew up in a musical family. Both her father and grandfather were saxophonists, and she took up the instrument at age six under her father Marcos’ tutelage. Aldana began on alto, influenced by artists such as Charlie Parker and Cannonball Adderley, but switched to tenor upon first hearing the music of Sonny Rollins, who would become a hero and mentor. She performed in Santiago jazz clubs in her early teens and was invited by pianist Danilo Pérez to play at the Panama Jazz Festival in 2005.
Aldana moved to the U.S. to attend the Berklee College of Music, and the year after graduating she released her first album Free Fall on Greg Osby’s Inner Circle label in 2010, followed by Second Cycle in 2012. In 2013, at 24, she became the first female instrumentalist and the first South American musician to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, in which her father had been a semi-finalist in 1991. After her win, she released her third album Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio (Concord). Aldana is also an in-demand clinician and educator and has recently been appointed to the faculty of the New England Conservatory’s Jazz Studies Department.
Ken Scahphorst
https://necmusic.edu/faculty/ken-schaphorst
A founding member of the Boston-based Jazz Composers Alliance, an organization in the tradition of jazz composer-directed ensembles dedicated to the promotion of new music in the jazz idiom, trumpeter and composer Ken Schaphorst has been awarded Composition Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and Meet the Composer.
Created in 1989, the Ken Schaphorst Big Band has featured many of today’s most notable young performers, including John Medeski, Uri Caine, Brad Shepik, Drew Gress, Donny McCaslin and Seamus Blake. Schaphorst has released seven recordings as a leader: Ken Schaphorst Big Band: Making Lunch (1989), Ken Schaphorst Big Band: After Blue (1991), Ken Schaphorst Ensemble: When the Moon Jumps (1994), Ken Schaphorst: Over the Rainbow (1997), Ken Schaphorst Big Band: Purple (1999), Ken Schaphorst: Indigenous Technology (2002) and Ken Schaphorst Big Band: How to Say Goodbye (2016).
Since coming to NEC as chair of the Jazz Studies department in 2001, Schaphorst has directed the Jazz Orchestra in its performance of new music and traditional big band repertoire. In recent years, the ensemble has performed under the direction of guest artists Django Bates, Jimmy Heath, John Hollenbeck, Jim McNeely and Maria Schneider. Named Best College Big Band in the 2004 Downbeat Student Music Awards, the ensemble has won critical acclaim for its recordings and for its performances throughout the country. Schaphorst also founded NEC's Youth Jazz Orchestra in 2008, one of NEC Prep's offerings for high school students.
Schaphorst’s three-movement Concerto for John Medeski, composed for his friend and fellow NEC alumnus, was commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received commissions from the NEA, Marimolin, Orange Then Blue, Boston University, Lawrence University, the Fox Valley Arts Alliance, the Jazz Composers Alliance, the Wisconsin Arts Board, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, Ball State University, and Augustana College.
B.A., Swarthmore College; M.M., New England Conservatory; D.M.A., Boston University. Composition with Thomas Oboe Lee, Gerald Levinson, William Thomas McKinley, Bernard Rands. Recordings on JCA, Accurate, Naxos. Former faculty of Lawrence University.