[Dixielandjazz] Contemporary Women in Jazz

[Stephen Barbone]

For the women on the list, here is a write up about a female drummer
who, by the way, just happens to be superb. May not be OKOM, but good
music nevertheless, as her reputation and those of the sidemen readily
attest.

November 23, 2002 - New York Times

A Quintet's Night of Text, Not Context

By BEN RATLIFF

      For a drummer's band to be recognizable as such, it takes a strong
musical presence. And Teri Lyne Carrington, in a performance on Thursday
night at the Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center, earned that presence —
not by a superabundance of volume, and not by the subtractive,
tempo-mutating style that's becoming important today. She earned it by
dogged consistency.

Ms. Carrington — who has rarely been seen around town as a band leader
in the last decade and a half, having entered the world of studio and
television work early on — played hard. She has a little of Elvin
Jones's relentless midtempo drive as she plays the ride cymbal; it's how
she spurs the band on. In some ways, the performance, to be repeated
tonight at 8 at the Kaplan Penthouse (10th floor, Rose Building, 165
West 65th Street)— bettered her new album, "Jazz Is a Spirit" (ACT) in
that it presented a single, rock-solid band rather than a revolving cast
with a number of aesthetic goals.

This was a night of text, not context — of music itself, not song
choices or concepts. The group happened to play a blues and a ballad and
some midtempo tunes, but the music was generally in impressive flux, and
the quintet had mastered its collective sound to the point that
repertory really didn't matter.

The rhythm section — Ms. Carrington, the bassist John Patitucci and the
pianist Mulgrew Miller — dug in, with Mr. Miller both swinging through
long phrases and stuttering fractured ones, as well as making blues
scales sound fresh amid the tumult in "Little Jump." Gary Thomas, on
tenor saxophone, played long, vigorous staccato improvisations. And the
harmonica player Grégoire Maret, sitting in for about half of the first
set, added improvisations that were startling in their pure melodic
invention, reliably building, cresting into true excitement and
deflating just before the end.