Jazz artists celebrated for International Women’s Day on Jazzwise, Jazz FM and Serious

Women’s contribution to jazz is set to be celebrated in a big way on 8 March as part of International Women’s Day, across a range of online performances from promoters Serious, a week of special programmes on Jazz FM and a new ‘Women In Jazz’ homepage on the Jazzwise website.

Things get underway this weekend as Serious, producers of the EFG London Jazz Festival, showcase many top names via series of full concert broadcasts, a new partnership with the Women of the World Festival Istanbul, playlists, galleries and more. The content can be found on a new dedicated webpage serious.org.uk/we-are-for-women - with content shared across Serious’ Facebook and Twitter pages for a long-weekend of celebration from today Friday 5 – Monday 8 March 2021. Features include their Director of Programming, Pelin Opcin powerful personal statement about her own experiences as well as Serious’ work with women and their ambitions for the future. There’s also a concert featuring British-Bahraini psychedelic ‘Arab jazz’ trumpeter Yazz Ahmed who collaborates with multi award-winning Turkish kamancha player and composer Melisa Yıldırım – streamed live from the WOW Istanbul on Friday 5 March from 12:55pm - and is free to view. There are also full live concerts from last November’s EFG LJF from Emma-Jean Thackray, Judi Jackson, Loraine James, Erased Tapes special, and more.

Jazz FM are also dedicating many shows across the week from 8-15 March with programmes and content to celebrate the “innovative women of jazz, soul and blues, and charities that are doing vital work in the UK”. The weeklong season opens with Jazz FM Voices: ‘Women In Jazz’, hosted by journalist and broadcaster Lou Paley, which explores some of the women who played a pivotal role in shaping Jazz History, while it closes with singer and Jazz FM presenter China Moses, alongside her industry colleagues, exploring the treatment of women in music, and what the future holds.

Elsewhere, the weekday 9pm and weekend ‘Discovery’ programmes will theme their curations around IWD, while the daily Business Breakfast will feature a series of special guests including Helen Pankhurst, great granddaughter of suffragette Emeline Pankhurst, and women spearheading the call for more gender diversity at the top of the business world. On IWD itself, the line-up of Jazz FM presenters including Clare Teal, Jez Nelson, John Osborne, Ruth Fisher, Mark Walker, Helen Mayhew and Sarah Ward will each select and pay tribute to ground-breaking female music icons. For the full details of the week’s programmes visit www.jazzfm.com

Jazzwise magazine will also launch a new, dedicated homepage – Women In Jazz: The Artists You Need To Know – which will be a permanent resource for readers to discover key female jazz artists, past and present, with dozens of full length features and interviews available for free on its ever-expanding website. These include interviews with composer/bandleader Maria Schneider – who won Jazzwise’s 2020 Albums of the Year Critics Poll for her stunning album, Data Lords – who gave an outspoken interview to the magazine last September about the dangers of big data and how artists need to have control over their own music and creativity. There are also interviews with important names from the UK scene including saxophonists Nubya Garcia and Cassie Kinoshi, leading vocalists Liane Carroll and Claire Martin, composer/bandleaders Nikki Illes and Issie Barrat, award-winning trumpeters Yazz Ahmed and Emma-Jean Thackray, and insightful articles by acclaimed jazz writer Val Wilmer, among many others. More features will be added as they are published in the coming months and years.

This page will be going live for International Women’s Day – visit the Jazzwise website and social media pages from 9am o on Monday 8 March