Kit McClure

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Kathleen "Kit" McClure (born March 18, 1951 in Jersey City ) is an American jazz musician ( alto saxophone , occasionally tenor saxophone , flute , bass clarinet ), who is best known as the leader of her big band .

Live and act

McClure grew up in Little Falls, New Jersey and had piano lessons from the age of seven. She started playing the trombone in local bands when she was 16. In 1969, she was among the first class of women to enroll for a bachelor's degree at Yale University . There she founded the New Haven Women's Liberation Rock Band in 1972 , but also appeared as a soloist. After graduating from Yale, she continued her saxophonist studies at the Manhattan School of Music in 1975 , but was too busy to pursue a degree. She initiated the Women in Jazz project to combat discrimination against women on the jazz scene. In 1982 she founded her own 16-piece big band, with which she accompanied Robert Palmer and toured Japan several times. The repertoire of the band, in which only women play, goes from Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington to Bebop and Aretha Franklin and James Brown to Beyoncé and their own pieces. After the debut album Some Like It Hot (1990), Teo Macero produced the second album Burning in 1996 , which she also presented in Europe.

In 2004 she started a project with which she revived interest in the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and recorded two albums with the music of this women's big band from the swing era . She also appeared as a soloist in the Barry White orchestra and toured with Sam & Dave , with whom she also recorded ( Day of R&B ).

literature

  • Leslie Gourse Madame Jazz: Contemporary Women Instrumentalists. Oxford University Press, New York 1995
  • Barbara J. Love (Ed.) Feminists who Changed America, 1963-1975. University of Illinois Press, 2006
  • W. Royal Stokes Living the Jazz Life: Conversations with Forty Musicians about Their Careers in Jazz. Oxford University Press, New York 2002

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kit McClure Band (redhotrecords.com)
  2. ^ Kit McClure Band Biography, AllAboutJazz.com
personal data
SURNAME McClure, Kit
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McClure, Kathleen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz musician
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Jersey City