Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice Announces Grant Recipients

Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice Announces Grant Recipients The institute's Score Compilation Grant will allow 10 women to create digital collections of their scores in the Berklee Library.

By

Tori Donahue

April 5, 2021

Melissa Aldana B.M. '09 is one of 10 recipients of the inaugural Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice Score Compilation Grant.

Image courtesy of Melissa Aldana

The Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice has announced that 10 women have been awarded the Score Compilation Grant, which allows recipients to create digital collections of their scores in the Berklee Library. The inaugural artists to receive the grant are Melissa Aldana, Courtney Bryan, Marilyn Crispell, Ingrid Laubrock, Nicole Mitchell, Tineke Postma, Michele Rosewoman, Shamie Royston, Angelica Sanchez, and Helen Sung.

As we attempt to contribute to a long-lasting cultural shift towards gender equity in jazz, we are proud to have established this unique grant opportunity for women composers, said Kris Davis, associate program director of creative development for the institute. We believe that encouraging and supporting women composers in the dissemination of their original music and scores is an important step towards gender equity in the field. This work is sure to benefit the Berklee community and future generations for years to come.

Compositions by the grant recipients are available for Berklee students, faculty, and staff in the colleges digital library. All scores can be found in the institutes women composers collection and are searchable under the following artists' names:

Melissa Aldana

Melissa Aldana 09

Image courtesy of Melissa Aldana

Born in Santiago, Chile, Melissa Aldana '09 began playing the saxophone when she was 6 years old under the tutelage of her father, Marcos Aldana, a professional saxophonist. She began with alto, influenced by artists such as Charlie Parker and Don Byas; however, upon hearing the music of Sonny Rollins, she switched to tenor saxophone, using a Selmer Mark VI that belonged to her grandfather. Aldana began performing at Santiago jazz clubs in her early teens and was invited by pianist Danilo P rez to perform at the Panama Jazz Festival in 2005. Aldana attended Berklee, where she learned from and worked with Joe Lovano, Terri Lyne Carrington, Hal Crook, Bill Pierce, and Ralph Peterson, among others. Following her graduation, Aldana moved to New York City to study under George Coleman. She recorded her first album, Free Fall, in 2010, which she performed at the Blue Note Jazz Club and Monterey Jazz Festival. Her second album, Second Cycle, was released in 2012. In 2013, Aldana was the first female musician and first South American to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, leading to a $25,000 prize and recording contract with Concord Jazz. On her latest album, Visions, Aldana connects her work to the legacy of Latina artists who have come before her. In 2019, Aldana received her first Grammy nomination, in the Best Improvised Jazz Solo category, for her song Elsewhere.

Courtney Bryan

Courtney Bryan

Image by Alex Smith

Courtney Bryan, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, is a pianist and composer of panoramic interests, according to the New York Times. Focusing on bridging the sacred and the secular, Bryans compositions explore human emotions through sound, confronting the challenge of notating the feeling of improvisation. Bryan has a bachelor's degree from Oberlin Conservatory, a master's degree from Rutgers University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from Columbia University. She has also completed an appointment as postdoctoral research associate in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Bryan is currently an assistant professor of music in the Newcomb Department of Music at Tulane University, and the Mary Carr Patton Composer-in-Residence with the Jacksonville Symphony. She was the 2018 music recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2019 Bard College Freehand Fellow, the 2019-2020 recipient of the Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition, and a 2020 United States Artists fellow. Bryan's work has been presented in a wide range of venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Miller Theatre, and others. She has two recordings, Quest for Freedom (2007) and This Little Light of Mine (2010), with a forthcoming recording in progress, Sounds of Freedom. Bryan is currently writing an opera, Awakening, which will premiere in 2021. She has presented music workshops at various academic settings including Princeton University, University of Chicago, the California Institute of the Arts, Brown University, and University of California, San Diego.

Marilyn Crispell

Marilyn Crispell

Image by Andrew Pothecary

Marilyn Crispell has been a composer and performer of contemporary improvised music since 1978. For 10 years, she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble. Crispell has performed and recorded extensively as a soloist and in collaboration with major artists on the American and international jazz scenes, such as Gary Peacock, Sebastian Gramss, Erwin Ditzner, Cecil Taylor, Mark Dresser, and many others. Crispell has worked with dancers, poets, filmmakers and visual artists, and participated in teaching workshops on improvisation. She has been the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship grants, a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission.

Ingrid Laubrock

Ingrid Laubrock

Image by Frank Schindelbeck

Ingrid Laubrock is an experimental saxophonist and composer who is interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multilayered, dense, and evocative sound worlds. A prolific composer, Laubro

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