NEA Jazz Master and three-time Grammy Award-winning drummer, producer and educator Terri Lyne Carrington started her professional career as a “kid wonder” while studying under a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music in Boston. In the mid-’80s, she worked as an in-demand drummer in New York before gaining national recognition on late-night TV as the house drummer for both “The Arsenio Hall Show” and Quincy Jones’ “Vibe” series.
While still in her 20s, Carrington toured extensively with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, among others, and in 1989, released a Grammy-nominated debut CD on Verve Forecast, “Real Life Story.” In 2011, she released the Grammy-winning album “The Mosaic Project,” featuring a cast of all-star women instrumentalists and vocalists. In 2013, she released “Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue,” which also earned a Grammy, establishing her as the first woman ever to win for best jazz instrumental album.
To date, Carrington has performed on more than 100 recordings and has toured or recorded with luminary artists such as Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, Woody Shaw, Diana Krall, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, James Moody, Yellowjackets, Esperanza Spalding and many more. Additionally, Carrington received an honorary doctorate from Berklee, and currently serves as founder and artistic director for the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.
In 2019, Carrington was granted the Doris Duke Artist Award, a prestigious acknowledgment in recognition of her past and ongoing contributions to jazz. Her current band project, Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science (a collaboration with Aaron Parks and Matthew Stevens), released its debut album, “Waiting Game,” in November 2019 on Motema Music.
“Waiting Game” was nominated for a 2021 Grammy Award and celebrated as one of the best jazz releases of 2019 by Rolling Stone, DownBeat, Boston Globe and PopMatters. DownBeat described the album as “a two-disc masterstroke on par with Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 hip-hop classic, ’To Pimp a Butterfly.’ " In 2020, Carrington was named as JazzTimes Critics Polls’ Artist of the Year, Jazz Artist of the Year by Boston Globe and Jazz Musician of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association (which she won again in May 2021).
