M³ DEEPER DIVES
TOWARDS GENDER LIBERATION IN OUR PERSONAL LIVES
MONDAY, JANUARY 17, 2022
2pm ET - 3:30pm ET
Panelists
Romarna Campbell
The nomadic spirit of this exciting drummer, producer and composer lives in her jazz and hip hop-infused music. Romarna Campbell’s irrepressible energy can be heard on ‘Inherently Political’, a super-charged sonic assault on racism that had her crowned New Name of the Week by Jamz Supernova, and ‘25 Songs For My 25th Birthday’, her kaleidoscopic debut featuring Soweto Kinch, Tomeka Reid, Sumi Tonooka and Lady Sanity. With international performances alongside Billy Childs, Courtney Pine and Denys Baptiste and mentors the calibre of Gary Crosby, Terri Lyne Carrington and Neal Smith, Romarna stands on the shoulder of giants is beating a path forward that is very much her own.
Eden Girma
Eden Girma — also known as aden — is a multi-instrumental musician, singer, and composer. Hailing from Madison, WI but of no particular home; grown at the nexus of many artistic traditions, drawing from it all to create and perform music that not only resonates with individual hearts, but brings people closer together in a spirit of intimacy and empathy.
Maya Keren
Maya Keren (she/her) is a pianist, vocalist, and composer hailing from Philadelphia, PA who performs regularly around Philly, New Jersey, and New York. She aims to make art that is compassionate and riotous, that smashes expectation and invents new ways of being together. Maya is an alumna of the Kimmel Center’s Creative Music Program and the Banff Workshop for Jazz & Creative Music, two programs that imprinted upon Maya the importance of vulnerability and trust in meaningful music-making. She carries this sentiment with her when she performs, in projects like improvising duo Moon! Moon! with bassist Akiva Jacobs and Julien Chang’s touring indie-rock band. Maya is currently studying Music and African American Studies at Princeton University, where she has been mentored by Kris Davis, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and Angelica Sanchez.
Lesley Mok
Lesley Mok is a drummer, composer, and improviser based in Brooklyn, NY. Interested in the ways social conditions shape our beings, Lesley’s work focuses on transposing, augmenting, and overacting humanness to explore ideas about normalcy, alienness, and privilege. She explores this by writing in a way that subverts traditional instrumental roles, often utilizing extreme ranges and unconventional timbres, while creating a context that allows for simultaneously different musical perspectives. By maintaining an agile and improvisatory approach, Lesley creates fantastical and evocative sound worlds through the use of dissonance.
Camila Nebbia
Camila Nebbia is a saxophone player, composer, improviser, multidisciplinary artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina recently based in Lyon, France. Her artistic practice and work reflect the constant creation of new sounds and visual landscapes, exploring the relationship between different forms of composition, free improvisation, electronic music and mixed media where memory and identity are one of the main resonances of her work.
Monnette Sudler
Grammy-nominated jazz guitarist, composer, recording artist and poet/writer/lyricist Monnette Sudler is the creator and artistic director of the Philadelphia Guitar Summit. The summit, which features internationally acclaimed artists showcasing the range of guitar music, has reached over 10,000 people through performances and workshops since its inception ten years ago. As a poet Monnette has recorded several poems Fire’s Burning, Hot Air Balloon and Can You Dig Me? She also recorded a children’s album called the Sun’s Peeking Over the Mountain featuring poems and music. Recently she collaborated with poet laureate Trapeta B Mayson on their CD This is How We Get Through and Sonia Sanchez joined Monnette on Meeting of the Spirits. Her latest release called Stay Strong on MSM-Records is available on all digital platforms. Steeplechase Records will also be releasing Monnette Sudler’s CD called In My Own Way archived from 1978 in November 2021. As a lyricist Miss Sudler has penned numerous songs. Monnette Sudler has performed with many jazz greats, including Reggie Workman, Odean Pope, Lakecia Benjamin, Hugh Masakela, the late Grover Washington Jr., and the Philly Pops Orchestra conducted by Ricky Minor. She has recorded for Steeplechase Records, Discograph, Hardly Records, and Heavenly Sweetness and is executive producer for MSM Records. Monnette Sudler’s musical and artistic diversity reflect in her literary and musical work. Monnette self published an improvisational workbook called Motif Mojo in 2015. She is a multi-disciplinary collaborator and has performed in Europe, Japan, South Africa, and Jamaica and throughout the United States. Monnette Sudler is a recipient of REC Philly Black Music City grant and the Chamber Music America Digital Residency Grant 2021, the Leeway Transformation Award, the City of Philadelphia Jazz Legend Award and Senator Vincent Hughes Jazz Legacy Award, among others. In 2020 Monnette received two composer grants, one from the Jazz Coalition and the Painted Bride New Music for a New Day. Monnette attended Berklee College of Music and is a graduate of Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music. Ms. Sudler has served on the Board for the National Academy of Recording, Arts and Sciences, INC. and is a current voting member. She is a member of BMI-Broadcast Music Inc. and the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Composers Forum.
Moderator
Jordannah Elizabeth
Jordannah Elizabeth is a widely published journalist, music critic, author and lecturer. Her newest book, She Raised Her Voice!: 50 Black Women Who Sang Their Way Into Music History is the first of its kind historical anthology for children. She has lectured at Columbia University, Pratt Institute, Maryland Institute College of Art and other reputable institutions. She currently teaches music business at The New School Jazz and Contemporary Music School in New York City.