In an interview with Wayne Enstice and Janis Stockhouse in Jazzwomen: Conversations with Twenty-One Musicians more than 20 years ago, pianist/composer Joanne Brackeen described herself as a “pioneer.” And indeed, no other woman of her generation apprenticed with Art Blakey, Freddie Hubbard, Stan Getz, and Joe Henderson before forging her own path as a leader. “No one in my age group played the kind of music that I play and had their own group and does what I do,” Brackeen said, referencing her female contemporaries. “I’m talking about doing all of it, as if I wasn’t a woman. And I never deviated. Being a pioneer, you can imagine what that’s like. It’s not so easy.”
A working musician since her high school years in Los Angeles, the 84-year-old Brackeen, a New Yorker since 1965 and the mother of four daughters, has witnessed—and contributed mightily to—the progression of jazz during her lifetime. In L.A., she led trios and played piano for bop-era tenor legends Teddy Edwards and Harold Land in a rhythm section with nascent masters like bassists Herbie Lewis and Scott LaFaro and drummers Billy Higgins and Frank Butler, while also developing a lifelong friendship with Ornette Coleman. Once ensconced in Manhattan, she became one of New York’s most respected pianists, playing long-haul gigs at downtown boîtes like the West Boondock and the Surf Maid when off the road, and constructing a distinguished career as a bandleader. On some 20 consistently excellent albums between 1975 and 2000 in contexts ranging from
