Biography
Terri Lyne Carrington is a Grammy-winning drummer, percussionist, composer, bandleader, and producer. Her signature, and often-emulated funky drumming style has been applied to many different settings, from jazz and soul to rock, blues, and crossover classical music. She is among the first significant female drummers in jazz. After beginning her recording career with bassist Rufus Reid's trio, she released Real Life Story, her Grammy-nominated leader debut in 1989. She spent the next 12 years as one of jazz's most in-demand drummers. After leading 2002's Jazz Is a Spirit, she began working regularly in that capacity. In 2011, she issued the Grammy-winning The Mosaic Project that straddled jazz and R&B with an all-star band of female players and singers. The following year she won a Grammy for Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue. In 2015, she issued Mosaic Project: Love and Soul, and in 2019, with new band Social Science and a dozen guests, she released the politically themed The Waiting Game. New Standards, Vol. 1 appeared in 2022.

Carrington was regarded as a prodigy in her hometown of Medford, Massachusetts. While in high school and college, she impressed many veteran jazz players. Moving to New York City in the early 1980s, she began to get gigs with local musicians before gaining enough attention to warrant another move, this time to California, where she was seen by millions on a nightly basis as a member of the band on The Arsenio Hall Show and worked with Wayne Shorter's late-'80s band. She released her debut recording as a leader on Verve Forecast in 1989. Into the late '90s, Carrington continued working steadily and was heard best in funk settings, as exemplified by her work with Herbie Hancock.

At the turn of the century, her second solo album began to take shape and was eventually released in 2002 as Jazz Is a Spirit. Two years later, she delivered Structure, featuring the similarly funk- and post-bop-inclined saxophonist Greg Osby. In 2007 she accepted a professor's appointment at her alma mater, the Berklee College of Music.

Carrington returned in 2009 with More to Say...Real Life Story; it featured an all-star lineup of guests including George Duke, Everette Harp, Kirk Whalum, and Walter Beasley, and then up-and-coming trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. In 2011, she released The Mosaic Project, which spotlighted several vocalists -- including Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, and Dee Dee Bridgewater, among others -- and was played by an all-female band. She won a Grammy for the set in 2012 for Best Jazz Vocal album.

After years of being haunted by the 1963 album Money Jungle, from the trio of Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach, Carrington decided to record her own radically reworked version with bassist Christian McBride and pianist Gerald Clayton. Her album also featured guest performances from trumpeter Clark Terry, trombonist Robin Eubanks, saxophonists Tia Fuller and Antonio Hart, and vocalist Lizz Wright. In addition to the original set's tracks, Carrington added some of her own tunes to the mix. Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue was released by Concord in February 2013.

She circled back to her ever-evolving Mosaic Project for 2015's Love Soul. The 12-song set showcased an entirely new female band, as well as a large host of vocalists who included Ledisi, Wright, Chaka Khan, Chante Moore, and Valerie Simpson. Carrington spent three years working with a new band to realize her next project for Motema Music.

For the 2018 opening celebration of the Berklee Institute for Jazz and Gender Justice, Carrington asked her students to select and perform songs from the famed jazz Real Book -- a compilation of lead sheets or scores of jazz standards -- written solely by women composers. She was shocked to discover it included only one. As an activist as well as an educator and musician, she has continually advocated for inclusivity in order to raise the profiles and voices of women, trans, and non-binary people in jazz. Over the next four years Carrington assembled New Standards (published by Hal Leonard, September 2022) a book of 101 jazz compositions written by women.

She also founded Terri Lyne Carrington Social Science. The band was comprised of pianist/keyboardist Aaron Parks, guitarist Matthew Stevens, multi-instrumentalist Morgan Guerin, vocalist Debo Ray, and MC/DJ Kassa Overall. The large ensemble recorded the double length set entitled The Waiting Game. Released in November 2019, its compositions confronted a wide spectrum of social justice issues.

In September 2022, the Candid label released Live at the Detroit Jazz Festival, an archival date from the 2017 event. Led by Wayne Shorter (that year's artist in residence) the quartet included Carrington, Esperanza Spalding, and pianist Leo Genovese. A week later, Candid issued New Standards, Vol. 1. Featuring 11 woman-composed tunes from her New Standards book, the drummer/leader assembled a star-studded guest list that included Ambrose Akinmusire, Melanie Charles, Ravi Coltrane, Val Jeanty, Samara Joy, Julian Lage, Michael Mayo, Elena Pinderhughes, Dianne Reeves, Negah Santos, and Somi. Carrington's core band on the date included pianist Kris Davis, bassist Linda May Han Oh, trumpeter Nicholas Payton, and Stevens on guitar. Co-produced with the guitarist, Carrington's goal is to record all 101 compositions in the book. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi




 
Videos
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Terri Lyne Carrington live at Paste Studio on the Road: Boston
Terri Lyne Carrington Tribute to Roy Haynes part 1
Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Terri Lyne Carrington - Message True
NEA Jazz Masters: Terri Lyne Carrington (2021)
Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper, Terri Lyne Carrington: "Afro Blue" | Jazz Day Istanbul
Terri Lyne Carrington ''Money Jungle'' - Jazzwoche Burghausen 2014
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