Jazz and Gender Justice
A conversation with Terri Lyne Carrington, Camila Cortina, Anthony Kelley, and Brenda Sisane
As we cross into the second century of the music’s history, jazz has undoubtedly become a globally inclusive music blending with countless traditions, vernacular and folkloric cultures and scenes across the world. However, how women, queer and gender non-conforming people are located in jazz complicates the often male-centered claim to the music’s democratic potential. This panel brings together leading journalists, artists and scholars to discuss and imagine what jazz without patriarchy means in our time and for the future.
Date: Thursday, April 10, 11am-1pm EST
Location: NorthStar Church of the Arts
220 W. Geer St., Durham, NC
Free lunch for participants
RSVP: duke.is/jazz
Co-sponsors: Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, Duke Department of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, NorthStar Church of the Arts.
Speaker bios:
Terri Lyne Carrington
Terri Lyne Carrington is an NEA Jazz Master, Doris Duke Artist, and four-time Grammy award- winning drummer, composer, producer, and educator. She serves as Founder and Artistic Director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, as well Artistic Director for both Next Jazz Legacy program (a collaboration with New Music USA) and the Carr Center in Detroit, MI. She has performed on more than 100 recordings over her 40-year career and has toured and recorded with luminaries such as Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Stan Getz, Esperanza Spalding, and numerous others. Her artistry and commitment to education has earned her honorary doctorates from York University, Manhattan School of Music and Berklee College of Music, and her curatorial work and music direction has been featured in many prestigious institutions internationally. The critically acclaimed 2019 release, Waiting Game, from Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science earned the esteemed Edison Award for music and a Grammy nomination. In fall of 2022, she authored two books, Three of a Kind (about the forming of the Allen Carrington Spalding trio) and the seminal songbook collection, New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets By Women Composers. This book was accompanied by the album new STANDARDS vol.1 (Candid Records) which won the GRAMMY® Award for the best jazz instrumental album, and New Standards art installation, at Detroit’s Carr Center and the Emerson Contemporary Media Art Gallery, as part of the Jazz Without Patriarchy Project.
Camila Cortina
Camila Cortina Bello is a Cuban-born pianist, composer, and educator whose music fuses Afro- Cuban traditions with jazz, classical, and world influences. A Berklee College of Music graduate, she has shared the stage with Paquito D’Rivera, Terri Lyne Carrington, Miguel Zenón, and Dianne Reeves, to name a few. In 2023, she was awarded a Next Jazz Legacy Fellowship, leading to performances at DC Jazz Festival, Ecuador Jazz Festival and Punta del Este Jazz Festival in Uruguay. Her solo piano piece Bravura premiered at London’s Barbican Centre in 2024, and she was a finalist for the Cintas Foundation Brandon Fradd Fellowship in Music Composition. She also appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk with the Afro-Cuban band OKAN. Originally from Havana, Camila’s music is deeply influenced by her cultural roots and global experiences. Now based in New Jersey, she actively performs in the New York music scene, continually expanding her artistic reach.
Anthony Kelley
Before joining the Duke University music faculty in 2000, Kelley served as Composer-in- Residence with the Richmond Symphony under a grant from Meet the Composer, Inc. Kelley was appointed as 2021-2025 Composer-in-Residence for the North Carolina Symphony. His major commissions for symphony orchestra include: Spirituals of Liberation and Constitutional: A Concerto Grosso (the North Carolina Symphony); Africamerica (1999 by the Richmond Symphony with piano soloist, Donal Fox); and The Breaks (by The American Composers Orchestra).
In 2024, Kelley reconstructed and completed composed portions of Mary Lou Williams’s final work, Mary Lou Williams’s ‘History…’. with double-premieres of the work by the New World Symphony (Miami, FL) and the Duke University Wind Symphony.
Kelley also co-directs and performs in the improvisational Postmodern new-blues quartet, the BLAK New Blues Ensemble with clarinetist Nicholas Lewis.
Brenda Sisane
Award winning broadcaster Brenda Sisane is in the South African Radio Hall of Fame. She has more than thirty years of experience in broadcast journalism, advancing the curation, programming and preservation of jazz music in South Africa and beyond. She is Founder and Director of the Spin Group companies comprising of a specialist communications agency in the arts and a non-profit agency using arts education to build new audiences in marginalised communities. She is passionate and writes about African culture particularly music and facilitates conversation with leaders in this subject. An experienced event producer, she continues to serve on funding juries for the sector, and often gets commissioned as artistic director for festivals and exhibitions. Collaborators include the Milan Handicrafts Expo, the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz, The Prince Albert Journey to Jazz, the Music and Lifestyle Expo South African jazz and health Alliance and more.
