Discover Great Women in Jazz

Good evening everyone,

This might be a question for @Hayden and teachers. Why are always piano styles of great man in jazz/blues are teached to piano students e.g. Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans and so on? Now one talks about great women in jazz such as

  • Dorothy Donegan
  • Toshiko Akiyoshi
  • Lil Hardin Armstrong
  • and many more
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Interesting question @Prisca

I think earlier in the 20th century jazz was a male-dominated artform, perhaps due to attitudes at the time. I remember someone shared this recording in the forum a while ago of Hazel Scott who was a fantastic jazz pianist - I’m sure your’ll agree :star_struck:

Thanks for sharing these, I’m familiar with Toshiko Akiyoshi and I will check out the others.

One of my favourite contemporary jazz pianists is a lady named Beegie Adair, check out her Spotify channel here:

I’m a big fan of her Christmas repertoire - both solo piano and her trio recordings. Definitely worth checking out.

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or Martha Davis’ Boogie…a bit old in black and white :star_struck:

and yes, I will definitaley check out Beegie Adair

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Great thread! Thank you for starting this Prisca. Lovely videos yay!

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This is a great topic. The history books tend to be skewed towards men in most subjects. I grew up playing guitar in the 80’s and never heard of women such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe until much later in life when she finally got her due.

I found these great recordings of Mary Lou Williams, Jutta Hipp and Beryl Booker after Tuomo mentioned that Williams had been Thelonious Monk’s teacher in one of his lessons here.

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