NEW ORG OPENS DOORS FOR JAZZ MUSICIANS

New Music USA and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice have launched a program focused on increasing opportunities for women and non-binary musicians, who are underrepresented in jazz.

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Next Jazz Legacy will invest in 20 instrumentalist/bandleaders over the next three years, supporting early-career artists via a $10,000 grant, a one-year performance apprenticeship, mentorship programs and promotion.

Terri Lyne Carrington, founder of the Berklee Institute, heads the program as Artistic Director aside an advisory board featuring trumpeter Sean Jones and pianist Kris Davis, plus representatives of NPR, WBGO, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center and the New York Winter Jazz Festival, among others.

"Next Jazz Legacy amplifies and addresses the need for all musicians, practitioners and professionals in jazz to contribute to a more equitable jazz future,” Carrington says. “The people that have benefited the most from long-established systems of oppression in our field are precisely the ones who need to help confront the problem. Otherwise, they are modeling, and at times even teaching, how to replicate those systems."

New Jazz Legacy candidate submissions will be accepted through 11/29 here.