Outside the Measure: Intersectionality in Black Jazz Space

Join us on Saturday, April 12 at 2:30pm for a conversation between two generations of jazz instigators, Terri Lyne Carrington and Alexis Lombre, who will discuss the history and future of gender equity in the making and playing of jazz music. The discussion will be moderated by the ethnomusicologist Dr. Traci Lombré.

Following Carrington and Lombre’s trio performance with Endea Owens at DROM on April 11, the conversation flows out of an ongoing public and private dialogue on doing and understanding the work of inclusivity; carrying the weight; and seeking the future of Black feminism in jazz.

This event is part of Alexis Lombre's residency with FourOneOne, taking place April 3 through 18 at venues across New York City. Spanning concerts, listening parties, and conversations with Lombre alongside her inspirations, mentors, and peers, the residency will foreground both her individual talents and their collective histories. More at www.fouroneoneprojects.org.

Pianist, vocalist, composer, and producer Alexis Lombre established herself as a force out of Chicago’s legendary musical universe while barely out of her teens. Living, learning, and working in the vibrant musical cultures of Chicago, Detroit, New York, and now Los Angeles, Lombre’s cosmopolitan musical vision is formed in dialogue with textures of contemporary urban Black experience in these cities. Dissolving “boundaries” between Black music’s so-called “genres”—including R&B, avant-garde, gospel, soul, hip-hop and jazz—is part of the living tradition she carries. As she puts it, “Separation is an illusion. Especially within the genres of Black music.”

Over a remarkable forty-year career, the drummer, bandleader, composer, producer, activist, and educator Terri Lyne Carrington has worked tirelessly on holistic transformations of jazz learning, performance, and history into spaces of welcome and recognition for female, nonbinary, and trans people. Nationally visible since before her teens, the Grammy winner and undisputed stateswoman of American jazz is also the Founder and Artistic Director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, which recruits, teaches, mentors, and advocates for musicians seeking to study jazz with racial and gender justice as guiding principles. She has performed on over 100 recordings and been awarded with two Grammys, for her albums The Mosaic Project (2011) and Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue (2013). In 2022, she released the seminal book and accompanying album New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets By Women Composers.

Dr. Traci Lombré is a cultural historian and ethnomusicologist specializing in the culture, performance, and pedagogy of Kansas City and Chicago’s Black community-based jazz traditions. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Smith College, a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and recently completed her Ph.D. in American Culture at the University of Michigan. Dr. Lombré is a member of Michigan’s Singing Justice Collective, which embraces divergent experiences of race, ethnicity, class background, academic rank, gender, and religion to investigate themes in Black American music. With this Collective, she is co-author of a book under contract with the University of Michigan Press, Black Song: A Manifesto for Music and Justice.