Registration deadline: Oct. 5th
Women have been present in jazz from its origins, though the music’s culture long confined their most visible roles to singing, marginalizing if not entirely ignoring women instrumentalists. This course corrects that, taking women instrumentalists as its primary focus, tracing their history from the pioneering pianists of the early decades — Lil Hardin Armstrong, Mary Lou Williams, and Marian McPartland among them — through the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and the long middle period when women worked largely at the margins of the mainstream It will culminate with sustained attention on the last thirty years, as women -- Carla Bley, Maria Schneider, Mary Halvorson, and Nicole Glover, among them -- have emerged as influential composers and soloists, reshaping the music’s present and future.. (Along the way, we will also listen to great women singers, but the class will concentrate on instrumentalists.)
Each class will involve a brief discussion of relevant social and musical history; extensive listening to recordings; open-ended time for shared reactions; and a brief conclusion that will sum up the day’s listening and point toward the next session. No out-of-class reading or listening will be required, but there will be plenty of suggestions for further listening – additional works by the featured musicians as well as recordings by other artists who might be considered forerunners or protégés. No musical knowledge is assumed or necessary.
Fritz Byers has been a devoted jazz fan since his high-school days in the early 1970s. He has hosted the suite of Jazz Spectrum shows, currently comprising Jazz Spectrum Friday, Jazz Spectrum Saturday, and Jazz Spectrum Overnight, on WGTE-FM 91, on its sister stations, and now online, continuously since he created the show in April 1989. He has written extensively about the music and currently writes and edits a blog on the Jazz Spectrum homepage, www.wgte.org/jazz.