Joanne Brackeen

A pianist and composer of exceptional talent, Joanne Brackeen created harmonically sophisticated, intricately inventive, and rhythmically bold music that substantially shaped jazz throughout the final decades of the twentieth century. Born Joanne Grogan in Ventura, CA on July 26, 1938, she acquired most of her skills independently yet pursued studies at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. Although pop pianist Frankie Carle provided her initial spark, exposure to Charlie Parker’s music transformed her direction, prompting swift growth into a dedicated jazz pianist. By the late ’50s she was performing regularly alongside saxophonists Teddy Edwards, Dexter Gordon, Harold Land, Charles Lloyd, and Charles Brackeen, who maintained ties to trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Ed Blackwell. Following their marriage the couple moved to New York City in 1965; after their eventual divorce she raised their four children while her playing matured under the guidance of McCoy Tyner, Ornette Coleman, and Chick Corea.

From 1965 to 1968 Joanne Brackeen performed on five albums issued under soul-jazz vibraphonist Freddie McCoy’s leadership. After collaborations with trumpeter Woody Shaw and saxophonist David Liebman she became the first woman to perform and record with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (1969-1972), appearing on the album Catalyst with trumpeter Bill Hardman and saxophonist Carlos Garnett. Between 1972 and 1974 she worked with saxophonists Joe Henderson, Joe Farrell, and Sonny Red, as well as mouth organist Toots Thielemans. She launched her own discography in 1975 while partnering with saxophonists Sonny Stitt and Stan Getz, the latter captured with her in a live recording at Copenhagen’s Cafe Montmartre in 1977. In 1982 she took full command of her professional path by assuming management duties herself.

Over many years Brackeen’s trios helped shape the ongoing evolution of modern jazz, consistently pairing her with bassists whose inventive rigor and improvisational command equaled her own, among them Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Rufus Reid, Cecil McBee, Clint Houston, and Eddie Gomez, a former Bill Evans Trio member who ranked among her favored partners. Her selection of associates remained consistently distinguished, encompassing drummers Jack DeJohnette, Al Foster, Idris Muhammad, Roy Haynes, and Billy Hart (another enduring collaborator whose participation in her groups extended across decades). Her guitarists have included Ryo Kawasaki, John Abercrombie, Earl Klugh, and Joshua Breakstone; she has created notable work with trumpeters Freddie Hubbard, Terence Blanchard, and John McNeil, flugelhornist Ed Sarath, and saxophonists Gary Bartz, Tom Scott, Michael Brecker, Bob Berg, Glen Hall, Lew Tabackin, Branford Marsalis, Donald Harrison, and Chris Potter, along with vocalist Kurt Elling.

In later years Brackeen gained wider acclaim both as a composer and as a solo artist while continuing to record alongside some of the most dynamic and inventive musicians active. During the ’90s her engagement with Brazilian music yielded Breath of Brazil (released in 1991), Brasil from the Inside, an album released in 1992 with guitarist Romero Lubambo, bassist Nilson Matta, and drummer Duduka da Fonseca (the unit internationally recognized as the Trio da Paz), and Take a Chance, a quartet recording that appeared in 1993. In 1994 she joined saxophonist Ivo Perelman on his vividly conceived tribute to composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, Man of the Forest. Additional Brazilian composers whose compositions have influenced Brackeen include Antonio Carlos Jobim, Milton Nascimento, Egberto Gismonti, and Gilberto Gil. In 2001 Brackeen recorded Eyes of the Elders with saxophonist Talib Qadir Kibwe, an Abdullah Ibrahim alumnus now performing under the name T.K. Blue, and with veteran multi-instrumentalist Makanda Ken McIntyre on what proved to be his final album, New Beginning. A veteran of lengthy service within an economically demanding and occasionally precarious professional sphere, Joanne Brackeen stands as an internationally recognized improvising artist and a valued educator at the Berklee College of Music.