The women-led East End Jazz will celebrate women’s history month with a concert Friday night at the Jamesport Meeting House.
The concert will showcase the talent of women who have shaped the landscape of jazz, featuring female composers and an all-star lineup of female musicians.
East End Jazz Director and Founder Iris Ornig said the program is designed to honor women whose contributions to jazz have often been overlooked.
“In every field, women are always suppressed and never get the full credit,” Ornig said in an interview this month. And jazz is no different, she said.
“For example, in the 1920s Lillian Hardin Armstrong composed a wonderful song called ‘Struttin’ with Some Barbecue’ and everybody says Louis Armstrong composed it. But it’s wrong. He was playing her composition,” Ornig said.
Lil Hardin was a jazz pianist, composer, arranger, singer and bandleader and the second wife of Louis Armstrong. She was well-established when she met Armstrong and is widely credited with building the trumpeter’s career.
The band will play compositions by Carla Bley, Mary Lou Williams and Alice Coltrane, wife of jazz legend John Coltrane. Alice Coltrane, overshadowed by her husband, “never got the respect she should have gotten,” Ornig said.
The concert will also include music from lyricist Dorothy Fields, whom Ornig described as “one of the most outstanding lyricists of the 1940s.” It will also showcase the music of iconic female jazz figures such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Irene Higginbotham and more.
It’s important for this history to be known and appreciated, Ornig said, just as it’s important for today’s talented women musicians to be showcased. “Especially right now, in our times, women have to stand up and not get pushed around,” Ornig said, “otherwise we’ll lose everything again.”
That’s a big part of the mission of East End Jazz, a not-for-profit organization that educates as well as performs, with the aim of inspiring young women musicians to pursue their craft. The group conducts workshops in the community year-round. Many of its members live on Long Island, including on the East End.
This is the second time East End Jazz will perform at the Jamesport Meeting House. Last year they presented a special program to celebrate the 175th birthday of Duke Ellington.
“It’s a beautiful place,” Ornig said of the historic Jamesport Meeting House, which was built in 1731 and is the oldest public building on the East End. She knew she wanted to have another concert there and in December approached the Meeting House about holding this concert during women’s history month.
Friday night’s all-women lineup includes:
Olivia Foschi, vocalist
Vanessa Trouble, vocalist and band leader
Ada Rovatti, saxophonist
Kal Ferretti, trumpet player
Eugenia Choe, pianist
Iris Ornig, bassist
Gary Kerkezou: drummer
Concert tickets are $20 each. The performance will begin at 7:30 p.m.
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