with Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, Johanna Schneider, Aja Burrell Wood and students of Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice
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According to a NPR Music Jazz Critics poll in 2019, women make up only 16 per cent of the core band personnel for ranked albums — in fact, the majority include no women musicians at all. Out of the top 50 albums in the poll, only 21 per cent were led or co-led by women. Similar structures exist in Germany: the jazz scene is still largely dominated by men. According to a 2016 Jazz Study, women make up only one-fifth of jazz musicians in Germany. It is also striking that only 12% of instrumentalists are women, as opposed to 86% of singers. With this in mind, in 2018 the UDJ (Union of German Jazz Musicians) published a "Joint Declaration on Gender Equality in Jazz", in which it demanded gender-neutral language, the fair distribution of functions and offices, and gender-balanced pedagogy. Also in 2018, Berklee College of Music launched the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice (JGJ), which celebrates the contributions women have made to the development of the art form with a focus on equity in the jazz field and on the role that jazz can play in the larger struggle for gender justice.
In this panel, JGJ Founder, Artistic Director and renowned jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, Managing Director and musicologist Aja Burrell Wood, jazz pianist and Berklee Associate Director Kris Davis and German jazz singer and activist Johanna Schneider look at the present situation and the obstacles encountered when trying to improve these grievances. They share strategies that are working as well as strategies that should be given greater consideration in the future.
Before the panel, Kris Davis will perform with a student ensemble from the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice featuring compositions from 'New Standards', a book featuring compositions by 101 women composers. The book was released by the Institute in September of 2022 as a supplement and alternative to the jazz-standards canon that has served students, teachers, and professionals for decades.
Presented in cooperation with
Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.
Kris Davis is a GRAMMY® award-winning pianist and composer described by The New York Times as a beacon for “deciding where to hear jazz [in New York] on a given night.” Davis has released 24 recordings as a leader or co-leader and collaborated with artists such as Terri Lyne Carrington, Dave Holland, John Zorn, Craig Taborn, Ingrid Laubrock, Tyshawn Sorey and Esperanza Spalding. She was named a 2021 Doris Duke Artist alongside Wayne Shorter and Danilo Perez, Pianist of the Year by DownBeat magazine in 2022 and 2020, and Pianist and Composer of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in 2021. In 2019, Kris Davis’ “Diatom Ribbons” was named jazz album of the year by both the New York Times and the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll. The album draws from the musical worlds of free improvisation, spoken word, electronica, mainstream jazz, R&B and rock. In September 2023, Davis released ‘Diatom Ribbons - Live at the Village Vanguard’ featuring Grammy winner and NEA Jazz Master Terri Lyne Carrington on drums, Julian Lage on guitar, Val Jeanty on turntables and electronics, and Trevor Dunn on bass. Davis is the Associate Program Director of Creative Development at the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice and the founder of Pyroclastic Records. Davis is a Steinway Artist.
NEA Jazz Master and four-time GRAMMY® award-winning drummer, producer and educator,
Terri Lyne Carrington started her professional career in Massachusetts at 10 years old. 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. To date, Ms. Carrington has performed on over 100 recordings and has been a role model and advocate for young women and men internationally through her teaching and touring careers. She has toured or recorded with luminary artists such as Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, Woody Shaw, Clark Terry, Diana Krall, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, James Moody, Yellowjackets, Esperanza Spalding, Chaka Khan, Natalie Cole, and Nancy Wilson. Carrington is 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.
Johanna Schneider studied jazz singing at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich and at the Folkwang University of the Arts Essen. In 2009 she founded the Johanna Schneider Quartet with Tizian Jost, Andreas Kurz and Bastian Jütte, for which she also composes and with which she has recorded two albums so far with the participation of guest musicians Ack van Rooyen, Tony Lakatos, Paul Heller & Florian Hoheisel. In addition to her own artistic work, she is also active as a singer in other band projects and as co-organizer of the PENG Festival, as well as a curator, juror and vocal coach. In 2021 she joined the board of the German Jazz Union.
Schneider has toured in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, USA, Cyprus, Turkey, Finland, Estonia, France, as well as Ethiopia, among others, and most recently traveled to Kyrgyzstan at the invitation of the German Embassy. As a singer of the JugendJazzOrchester NRW she was awarded the WDR Jazz Prize in 2013 and as co-initiator of the feminist "Jazzkollektiv PENG" in 2021. She has worked with Rick Margitza, Kevin Mahogany, Romy Camerun, Laia Genc, Sabine Kühlich, Alex Morsey, Bob Degen, Marc Brenken, Dietmar Fuhr, Silvio Morger, Luciano Biondini, Mareike Wiening, Nicole Johänntgen, Martin Sasse, Martin Scales, Guido May, Christian Lettner, Thomas Hufschmidt or Biboul Darouiche, among others.
Aja Burrell Wood is the managing director for Berklee’s Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.
Originally from Detroit, Michigan, Wood is an ethnomusicologist, educator, and curator with a background in development and violin performance. She has taught courses on music, history, and culture at the City University of New York (CUNY), City College, and Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music. Her work includes research on musical community among black classical musicians, women in jazz, jazz in the digital era, music and civic engagement in Harlem, and other related genres of the African diaspora such as blues, hip-hop, soul, and West African traditions. She has been a visiting fellow at the New School in addition to her role as guest lecturer at New York University and various institutions throughout New York City.
Terri Lyne Carrington, jazz drummer and JGJ founder
Johanna Schneider, jazz singer and German Jazz Union board member
Kris Davis, jazz pianist
Aja Burrell Wood, JGJ director
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