The Medford native Terri Lyne Carrington says she enjoyed a “charmed childhood.” Born to music-loving parents — her father served as president of the Boston Jazz Society — she inherited her grandfather’s drum kit, and she began studying at Berklee College of Music at age 11.
By 18, encouraged by her mentor, Jack DeJohnette, Carrington was working in New York’s prolific jazz scene. Today she is a Grammy Award-winning bandleader who has performed with a long list of jazz greats, from Stan Getz to Herbie Hancock.
It wasn’t until she was firmly established in her career, she says, that she realized the path isn’t so clear for most women in jazz.
“I started listening more to other people and their stories,” she says. “It became a groundswell of conscience that really should have been there all along. If I wasn’t helping things change, then I was part of the problem.”
In 2018 she launched the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice at Berklee, where she has been teaching since 2007. Now the Institute has partnered with New Music USA to create Next Jazz Legacy, a program designed to increase opportunities for women and nonbinary musicians through grants, long-term apprenticeships, and career development guidance. Announced Monday, Next Jazz Legacy is accepting applications through Nov. 29 for its inaugural class of six.
Set to celebrate its 10th anniversary, New Music USA is the product of the 2011 merger of the American Music Center, which was established in 1939, and Meet the Composer, inaugurated in 1974 as a project of the New York State Council on the Arts. Working with major donors, the organization provides about $1 million to musicians annually.
Vanessa Reed, president and CEO of New Music USA, calls Carrington “a role model for all the people we’re trying to reach.”
Gender equality in music is a major focus for Reed and her team. Each candidate chosen as a Next Jazz Legacy artist will receive a $10,000 grant. More importantly, Reed says, they will receive on-the-job training that will hopefully last a lifetime.
“There’s a big risk that they don’t end up being able to continue for the long haul,” she says. “We want to equip them for that.”
As a professor, Carrington says she sees it all too often: Female students are far more likely to forgo a possible career in music than men.
“You can tell. You can see it in the field,” says Carrington, whose most recent album, 2019′s “Waiting Game,” was conceived as a collection of jazz protest songs. “This is an extension of the work we do while they’re in college. This will help the collective work that needs to happen to change the culture.”
When she was coming up, she says, the musicians who hired her championed her development in a way that remains unusual in the business.
“What I’ve come to realize, it’s one thing to hire a woman you feel can play. That promotes the exceptionalism of this person — ‘she’s different.’
“A lot of people maybe hired me before I was necessarily ready. That’s where somebody really deserves credit, by hiring somebody who has potential, but still needs some development.”
Traditionally, it’s men who have been hired based on their potential, she says. With Next Jazz Legacy, Carrington says, “we’re making space.”
More information on Next Jazz Legacy at https://newmusicusa.org/program/next-jazz-legacy
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames.