M³ DEEPER DIVES - Toward gender liberation in our Personal Lives
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.
THIS IS A MOVEMENT KEYNOTE CONVERSATION: PERSONAL
THIS IS A MOVEMENT
KEYNOTE CONVERSATION: PERSONAL
Toward gender liberation: How those marginalized by gender identity experience and transform the professional/personal juncture.
MONDAY, JANUARY 17, 2022
11am ET - 1pm ET
Panelists
Linda May Han Oh
J Hoard
Kat Rodriguez (Director of the Brooklyn College Jazz Big Band)
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Moderator
Elenna Canlas
M³ DEEPER DIVES - TOWARD GENDER LIBERATION ON THE BANDSTAND
M³ DEEPER DIVES
TOWARD GENDER LIBERATION ON THE BANDSTAND
SUNDAY, JANUARY 16, 2022
2pm ET - 3:30pm ET
Panelists
Samantha Boshnack
Composer/performer/bandleader Samantha Boshnack’s pulsing sonic explorations vitalize her chamber orchestra B’shnorkestra, her band Seismic Belt, her eponymous quintet, composers’ collective Alchemy Sound Project, and the postmodern outfit Reptet. An alumni of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, Boshnack received the Make Jazz Fellowship in 2018.
Miriam Elhajli
Miriam Elhajli is a Venezuelan-Moroccan-American composer and poet whose work is influenced by the folkloric traditions of their heritage as well as improvised and new-music idioms.
Elhajli currently lives between anywhere & brooklyn performing on stages and street corners, making puppets, and working as a researcher at The Association for Cultural Equity founded by Alan Lomax. Elhajli's debut LP "Observations" was released this spring on her independent label Numina Records. Elhajli's sophomore album is set to be released 2/2/22.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the
Cleo Reed
Cleo Reed is a student of black underground sound named after Cleophus, her great grandmother and a fellow Aquarius. She reaches deeply into her own lineage and uses it as a reference for her work in the production and design of soundscapes, compositional and popular music works, in addition to mixing, mastering, and editing her own music and visuals.
Michele Rosewoman
A fearless bandleader and mentor for four decades, Michele Rosewoman has expanded the horizons of jazz while remaining firmly rooted in tradition. With recordings as leader on Blue Note, Enja, SoulNote, Toshiba-EMI and her own Advance Dance Disques label, her long-standing Quintessence ensemble has consistently brought together cutting-edge voices (Greg Osby, Steve Coleman, Miguel Zenon, Gary Thomas, Terri Lyne Carrington, Tyshawn Sory) while her New Yor-Uba ensemble presents an uncompromised synthesis of contemporary jazz and traditional Cuban folkloric music, uniting master musicians from both worlds, She has performed with many jazz and Latin music greats, including, Jimmy Heath, Billy Harper, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, Rufus Reid, Reggie Workman, Freddie Waits, Gary Bartz, James Spaulding, Billy Hart, Carlos Ward, Billy Bang, Celia Cruz, Paquito D’Rivera, Chocolate, Orlando 'Puntilla' Rios, Román Díaz and Pedrito Martinez. She has presented her various ensembles at festivals, concert halls, clubs and universities throughout the world and is an active and dedicated educator. A 2016 Latin jazz Grammy winner, her own innovative projects have received great critical acclaim and numerous prestigious awards.
Sumi Tonooka
Sumi Tonooka has been called a “fierce, fascinating composer pianist” (Jazz Times), “provocative and compelling” (The New York Times), and “inventive, original, surprising” (Cuadranos de Jazz, Madrid). With twelve recordings and a vast catalogue of compositions in genres symphonic, chamber, dance, and film, Tonooka is a creative force. She is a 2019 winner of Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works grant, a finalist in the 2020 African American Composer Initiative for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and composing a new work, In The Green Room with vocalist and composer Jen Shyu, for Asia Society and Doris Duke Charitable Fund.
Malika Zarra
Jazz has been called one of America’s greatest contributions to the world’s culture, but it’s important to remember it’s an art form that has grown from countless cultural exchanges with artists and styles outside the U.S. An inspiring new international voice, who is both influenced by jazz and is bringing her own culture and creativity to the melting pot, is MALIKA ZARRA. Born in Morocco, raised in France, lived ten years in New York City and four years in Morocco this gifted composer, producer and singer has invented a new Moroccan urban-world-jazz by tastefully using traditional North African chaâbi, Berber and Gnawa polyrhythms to underpin her distinctly contemporary urban compositions, all the while maintaining a sophisticated improvisational modern jazz approach.
Moderator
Kyla Marshell
Kyla Marshell is a writer whose poems, essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in The Guardian, Kinfolk, O Magazine, Ebony, The Ringer, and The Believer, among others. In her work as an arts & culture writer, she has covered a wide range of musical subjects, including the Afropunk festival and Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer win, and interviewed such artists as Esperanza Spalding, Van Hunt, Gretchen Parlato, Kelis, Keyon Harrold, and Dev Hynes. Originally from Boston, she grew up in Silver Spring, MD, Morehead, KY, and Portland, ME, and now lives in Brooklyn, NY.
THIS IS A MOVEMENT KEYNOTE CONVERSATION: BANDSTAND
THIS IS A MOVEMENT
KEYNOTE CONVERSATION: BANDSTAND
Toward gender liberation: the bandstand as a landscape of liberation.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 16, 2022
11am ET - 1pm ET
Panelists
Terri Lyne Carrington
Shanta Thake
Vuyo Sotashe
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Moderator
Naomi Extra
Naomi Extra is a freelance writer, poet, and scholar. In both her creative and scholarly work she explores the themes of agency and pleasure in the lives of Black women and girls. Her work has appeared in Boston Review, Zora, Glamour, Lit Hub, The Lily, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her manuscript, Ratchet Supreme, was selected by poet Tiana Clark as the winner of the 2019 BOAAT Chapbook Prize. Currently, she is an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Emerging Voices Fellow in Feminist Knowledge and Social Justice at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
M³ DEEPER DIVES - TOWARDS GENDER LIBERATION IN THE COMMUNITY
M³ DEEPER DIVES
TOWARDS GENDER LIBERATION IN THE COMMUNITY
SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2022
2pm ET - 3:30pm ET
Panelists
Caroline Davis
Mobile since her birth in Singapore, Caroline Davis’ music covers a wide range of styles, owed to her constantly shifting environment as a child. Her albums as a leader include Live Work & Play (2012), Doors: Chicago Storylines (2015), My Tree’s Afterglow (2017), Heart Tonic (2018), Alula (2019), Persona’s Anthems (2019), My Tree’s Where the Grace Is (2021), and Portals’ Mourning, Volume 1 (2021), featuring her saxophone, flute, and vocal expressions. She won the Downbeat Critic's Poll “Rising Star Alto Saxophonist” in 2018. Davis has worked with Lee Konitz, Angelica Sanchez, The Femme Jam, Matt Mitchell, Terry Riley, Miles Okazaki, Thana Alexa, and Billy Kaye. Davis has been a composer-in-residence at the esteemed MacDowell Colony, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship recipient, a CMA Performance Plus Grant awardee, and composed commissions for Arco Collaborative and the MAP Fund. Her compositional practice integrates cognitive science with an emphasis on somatic healing, integrated with her Ph.D work in Music Cognition. Davis is an advocate for social justice in the realm of gender, expressed in a co-taught Jazz & Gender course at The New School, as well as in the abolitionist movement.
Jen Shyu
(M³ Co-founder) – Guggenheim Fellow, USA Fellow, Doris Duke Artist, multilingual vocalist-composer-multi-instrumentalist-dancer JEN SHYU is “one of the most creative vocalists in contemporary improvised music” (The Nation). Born in Peoria, Illinois, to Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrants, she’s produced eight albums, performed at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Theater of Korea, Rubin Museum, was named Downbeat’s 2017 Rising Star Female Vocalist, and is a Fulbright scholar speaking 10 languages. Her Song of Silver Geese was among New York Times’ “Best Albums of 2017.” She’s currently touring her third solo production Zero Grasses (commissioned by John Zorn) across all 50 states and has received wide critical acclaim for her latest album Zero Grasses: Ritual for the Losses, with “When I Have Power” on Nate Chinen’s “Best Songs of 2021” list for NPR. She is also a Paul Simon Music Fellows Guest Artist and a Steinway Artist.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the
Sara Serpa
(M³ Co-founder) – Lisbon, Portugal native Sara Serpa is a vocalist-composer and improviser who implements a unique instrumental approach to her vocal style. Recognized for her distinctive wordless singing, Serpa has been immersed in the field of jazz, improvised and experimental music since first arriving in New York in 2008. Described by the New York Times as “a singer of silvery poise and cosmopolitan outlook”, Serpa started her career with jazz luminaries such as Grammy-nominated pianist Danilo Perez, and Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow pianist Ran Blake. As a leader, she has produced and released ten albums; the latest being Recognition, an interdisciplinary project that combines film with live music, in collaboration with Zeena Parkins, Mark Turner and David Virelles. Serpa was voted #1 Vocals of the Year by the 2020 NPR Jazz Critics Poll, Musician of the Year 2020 by Portuguese magazine Jazz.pt and Rising Star 2019 by the Downbeat Magazine Critics Poll. Serpa currently teaches at The New School, New Jersey City University and is Artist-In-Residence at Park Avenue Armory.
Shanta Nurullah
Shanta Nurullah makes music primarily on sitar, bass and mbira, and works as a storyteller and teaching artist. She co-founded the all-women's groups Sojourner and Samana, and currently leads the ensemble Sitarsys. A member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), she performs with its Great Black Music Ensemble and has performed and recorded with AACM members Nicole Mitchell and Dee Alexander. A 2021 3Arts awardee, Shanta also received fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council and the Zora Neale Hurston Award from the National Association of Black Storytellers.
Fay Victor
Fay Victor is a sound artist and bandleader that uses performance, improvisation and composition to examine representations of modern life and blackness. Based in Brooklyn, NY, Fay’s ‘everything is everything’ creative aesthetic permeates her working approach to the vocal instrument. Fay has released eleven critically acclaimed albums as a leader, including her latest release,“WE’VE HAD ENOUGH!” with her improvising quartet SoundNoiseFUNK (ESP-Disk) in October 2020 and has performed with luminaries such as Gary Bartz, Archie Schepp, Nicole Mitchell, Randy Weston and Amina Claudine Myers. Victor is on the faculty of the New School and RocNation(LIU) and a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble.
Anjna Swaminathan
Anjna Swaminathan is a queer multidisciplinary artist, composer, violinist, vocalist, writer, theatre artist, and dramaturg. As an artist with a passion for sociopolitical work, community building, and critical consciousness, their artistic practice is an extension of their activist spirit. Informed by rigorous training in the Carnatic and Hindustani music traditions of India, Swaminathan creates in New York’s vibrant creative music and improvisatory scene, in hybrid classical compositional work, and in their own multidisciplinary projects. They are a disciple of violin maestro Parur Sri M. S. Gopalakrishnan, Mysore Sri H.K. Narasimhamurthy and Hindustani vocalist Samarth Nagarkar. Since 2018, Swaminathan has been under the compositional mentorship of Gabriela Lena Frank with whom they are exploring the creative possibilities of Western Classical notation as a mode of communication for Indian classical compositional and improvisational ideas. As an educator, Swaminathan has a strong commitment to mindfulness-based music-making, socially conscious and empathetic principles, and expression-oriented rigorous practice.
Moderator
Kavita Shah
Kavita Shah is an award-winning vocalist, composer, researcher, polyglot, and lifelong New Yorker hailed by NPR for possessing an “amazing dexterity for musical languages”. Her projects blending modern jazz, new music, and folkloric traditions include “Visions” (2014), “Folk Songs of Naboréa” (2017), “Interplay” (2018, nominated for France’s Victoires de la Musique), and “Cape Verdean Blues” (forthcoming, 2022). She is currently working on an album of original music with her jazz quintet, chronicling the journey to her ancestral villages in rural India. Kavita regularly performs her music at major concert halls, festivals, and clubs on six continents. She holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Harvard and a Master’s in Jazz Voice from Manhattan School of Music.
THIS IS A MOVEMENT KEYNOTE CONVERSATION: COMMUNITY
THIS IS A MOVEMENT
KEYNOTE CONVERSATION: COMMUNITY
Toward gender liberation: How we build better spaces and structures in our existing community.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2022
11am ET - 1pm ET
Panelists
Angel Bat Dawid
Fabian Almazan
Gargi Shinde
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
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.