Homegrown Dialogues: Womanist Perspectives on Spirit, Sound, and Sustainability

Continuing Pittsburgh’s jazz legacy, saxophonist Chelsea Baratz moved to New York at the age of 19 to attend the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music on a scholarship. She has traveled the world playing music, and works on both the New York & Chicago music scenes. Chelsea has been a regular on the jazz scene in Pittsburgh since high school, where she grew up playing with legendary hard-bop drummer Roger Humphries, bassist Dwayne Dolphin and the young trumpet titan Sean Jones. She spent two years after high school studying music & working in Pittsburgh, during which she briefly studied with Branford Marsalis & honed her craft in anticipation of moving to New York. In July 2006 Chelsea was featured as a guest artist with Corey Wilkes’ Chicago Young Lions Project at Millennium Park with Jimmy Cobb & Von Freeman. 

Chelsea also performs on Aretha Franklin’s album Jewels in the Crown, and is featured as an artist & composer on Corey Wilkes’ debut release Drop It (Delmark Records). Chelsea also played with the 2007 IAJE Sisters in Jazz collegiate all-stars, performed at the 2007 IAJE conference in New York, the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and the Costa Rica International Jazz Festival in San Jose, Costa Rica. Chelsea has also performed with such esteemed artists as Louis Hayes, Christian McBride, DJ Logic, Roy Hargrove, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Vincent Herring, Eric Lewis, Rob Glasper, and Robert Irving III. 

Chelsea’s debut record In Faith (2006) features nine original compositions and a Fela Kuti tribute that show her strong roots in the jazz tradition as a player & composer, while revealing influences from R&B, hip-hop, gospel, contemporary jazz, and blues music. Produced by trumpet player & producer Maurice Brown, the album includes a roster of Brown & Corey Wilkes on trumpet & flugelhorn; Orrin Evans & Mike Murray on piano; Richie Goods & Luques Curtis on bass; Obed Calvaire & Jevon Rushton on drums, and special guests Renee Nuefville (vocals), Chris Rob (vocals), Raymond Angry (keys) and Craig Handy (flute).

Zaccai Curtis is an acclaimed recording artist and producer, recently honored with the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album. He leads his own groups, the Zaccai Curtis Quintet and Sonido Solar, and after five successful releases, is set to release his new album Sonoluminescence in 2026.

Together with his brother Luques, Zaccai co-founded the record label TRRcollective, a collaborative space for musicians to produce and release their own music. He is also proud to have produced the Grammy-nominated album Entre Colegas by Andy González (2016).

A native of Connecticut, Zaccai moved to New York City in 2005, where he has performed with renowned artists including Christian Scott, Donald Harrison, Cindy Blackman Santana, Eddie Palmieri, Lakecia Benjamin, Brian Lynch, the Mambo Legends, Avery Sharpe and many others.

In addition to his performance career, Zaccai is a respected educator, teaching at the University of Hartford’s Jackie McLean Jazz Studies Division. He is also an author, having written two instructional books: Art of the Guajeo and Theory of the Common Voicing, which support students in their Jazz and Latin Jazz studies.

A three-time ASCAP Young Jazz Composer Award winner, Zaccai is a prolific composer and arranger for his own groups, as well as artists like Little Johnny Rivero, Steve Kroon, Waitiki 7 and Sonido Solar. His quartet was chosen by the U.S. State Department for the American Music Abroad (Jazz Ambassadors) program twice, touring South Asia in 2006. In 2007, he received the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism’s Artist Fellowship for original composition. In 2017, he was awarded the Chamber Music America’s New Jazz Works grant, and in 2020, he was named Rising Star in the DownBeat Critics Poll.

Houngan Collin Edouard is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at Yale University, focusing on vocality in Haitian Vodou ceremonies. He received the 2023 Karen McCarthy Brown Award for his research on breath and the body in Vodou, as well as the 2024 Emerging Scholars Award from the Haitian Studies Association. With over a decade of teaching experience, he currently teaches at Bridgeport University, where he won the 2024 Excellence in Teaching Award. A contributing author to The New Teacher’s Guide to Overcoming Common Challenges, he holds multiple degrees in music and is a priest in the Haitian Vodou tradition.

The youngest person ever inducted into the Pittsburgh Jazz Hall of Fame, bassist Richie Goods got an early start playing in church and clubs while still attending Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts High School. After graduating from the prestigious jazz program at Berklee College of Music, Richie moved to New York City, where he studied under jazz legends Ron Carter and Ray Brown. 

Richie credits jazz luminary Mulgrew Miller for helping him hone his jazz skills early in his career. Richie toured and recorded with Mulgrew for nine years. That opportunity afforded him the opportunity to record and tour with a variety of jazz and popular artists ranging from the Headhunters, Lenny White, Louis Hayes and the Cannonball Adderley Legacy Band, Milt Jackson, Russell Malone, Vincent Herring, the Manhattan Transfer and Walter Beasley to Brian McKnight, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Whitney Houston and Christina Aguilera. Richie’s discography also includes Grammy award-winning and platinum albums of Alicia Keys and Common. Richie also toured with Grammy-winning trumpeter, Chris Botti for 5 plus years.

Richie received critical acclaim for his first recording with Nuclear Fusion – Richie Goods & Nuclear Fusion Live at the Zinc Bar (2009) – which was followed by the album Three Rivers in 2015. He then recorded My Left Hand Man – A Tribute to Mulgrew Miller with The Goods Project.   A self-produced tribute to his mentor, it spent 36 weeks on the JazzWeek charts in 2020, 8 in the top 20.  Richie’s credits as producer include his projects The Path and We Three Kings and vibraphonist Chien Chien Lu. Richie continued his collaboration with Chien Chien on their latest recording Connected released in January, 2023. 

Omi Osun Joni L. Jones is an artist/scholar/facilitator who employs Black Feminist aesthetics and theatrical jazz principles in her work.  Her most recent book is Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Àṣẹ, and the Power of the Present Moment, a collaborative ethnography focusing on three theatrical jazz practitioners.  Omi has been shaped by Robbie McCauley’s activist art, Laurie Carlos’s insistence on being present, and Barbara Ann Teer’s overt union of Art and Spirit.  She is Professor Emerita from the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin, a mother, a Queer wife, and a curious sojourner.

Drummer Gene Lake was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and started his musical journey at the early age of 5 where he took lessons at The High School of Music & Art NYC. Lake was exposed very early to the Black Artist Group, “a seedbed for innovation” and a collective rally of black musicians, poets, dancers and artists from all disciplines led by his father Oliver Lake. This has manifest in his constant desire to actively search for innovation and musically adventurous forms and techniques.

After attending Berklee, he joined Henry Threadgill’s ensemble in 1990. Lake has performed with a stunningly diverse range of artists: Joe Zawinul, Marcus Miller, Steve Coleman, Me’shell NdegeOcello, D’Angelo, Cassandra Wilson, Jason Miles, the World Saxophone Quartet, as well as diverse R&B and jazz/rap groups and the wildly original rock/funk/jazz fusion group Torsos.

Lake is an all-around drummer who embodies the contradictions of modern music.

His album Here And Now (2010) takes the listener on a musical journey, traveling from hard funk to jazz fusion via R&B songs. It features an eclectic mix of pop vocals, virtuoso drumming and instrumental ballads and diverse musicians ranging from jazz legend David Sanborn on saxophone to harmonica player Gregoire Maret and two Screaming Headless Torsos musicians, pop vocalist Freedom Bremner and jazz/rock guitarist David Fuiczynski. In 2022 Gene released the album The Kingdom Within.

Trained as an ethnomusicologist, jazz historian, and pianist, Mark Lomanno explores the resonances between artistic performance, academic study, and sustainable community-building. Specializing in interdisciplinary approaches to music studies, Lomanno approaches his teaching and research through a mix of ecomusicology, environmental humanities, ethnography, improvisation studies, historiography, phenomenology, spirituality studies, and translation studies. Geographically, Lomanno’s ethnographic, performance, and scholarly work are based in the Afro-Atlantic world, most especially in the Canary Islands.

Lomanno has published writing in multiple journals, the Grove Dictionary of American Music, and in two recent edited volumes (Intimate Entanglements: Vulnerability in the Ethnography of Performance and Playing for Keeps: Improvisation in the Aftermath of Crisis). He co-edited (with Daniel Fischlin) The Improviser’s Classroom: Pedagogies for Co-Creative Worldmaking, published by Temple University Press in 2025 for the Press’s Insubordinate Spaces series. He has several ongoing projects, including chapters in Translating the Field: Music, Power, Praxis; the Oxford Handbook of Ecomusicology; and Critical Approaches to Canary Island Studies. His monograph on intercultural collaboration in global jazz is forthcoming.

Through his teaching, research, and performance Lomanno is active in community-based and public initiatives, most especially through outreach and advocacy work related to his ethnographic courses and scholarship. He has curated several residencies and symposia, including on: Improvisation and Social Advocacy (2015), with Canarian jazz fusion group Simbeque (2017), Black Feminist Ecologies (2021), and the “Homegrown Dialogues” event (2025) with vocalist Andromeda Turre at Yale University, funded by a grant from the University’s Institute for Sacred Music. As a jazz industry professional, Lomanno has experience in archival work, arts administration, music journalism, and venue management. He also writes for the magazine Jazz Times and runs the website “Rhythm of Study” (rhythmofstudy.com). Lomanno’s piano performance career includes residencies and appearances across the United States and abroad, along with several recordings, including a 2013 collaborative release with Canarian saxophonist Enrique “Kike” Perdomo.

Lomanno has served in several administrative roles for the Society for Ethnomusicology, including as former Chair of the Improvisation Section. Lomanno is also active in the American Musicological Society, the Grupo Internacional de Estudios Canarios, Jazz Journalists Association, the Small Island Cultures Research Initiative, as well as the international jazz research networks, Rhythm Changes (based in the European Union) and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (Canada).

At the University of Miami, Lomanno has a secondary appointment in the Department of Anthropology and serves on the Faculty Advisory Council for the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. Before coming to Miami, Lomanno taught at Swarthmore College (as a Consortium for Faculty Diversity and Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow), St. John’s University, Northeastern University, and Albright College (with appointments in Africana Studies, Latin American Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies).

Kameelah L.  Martin was raised in a military family and has lived all over the United States including Omaha, Nebraska; Little Rock, Arkansas; North Hollywood, California; Atlanta, Georgia; as well as Okinawa, Japan. She completed high school in Albany, Georgia then entered Georgia Southern University as a first-generation college student. Graduating (cum laude) with a BA in English in December (2000); her fear of the corporate workforce compelled her to pursue a career in higher education following her undergrad years.

She went on to earn a Master’s degree in Afro-American Studies from the University of California Los Angeles in 2003.  Moving directly into a doctoral program, Dr. Martin earned her final degree in English from Florida State University in 2006. Her area of focus is twentieth century African American literature with an emphasis in folklore and, more specifically, the African American conjuring tradition. Her dissertation earned the FSU Department of English J. Russell Reaver Award for Outstanding Dissertation in American Literature or Folklore

Dr. Martin’s research explores the lore cycle of the conjure woman, or black priestess, as an archetype in literature and visual texts.  In 2012, Palgrave McMillan published her first monograph Conjuring Moments in African American Literature: Women, Spirit Work, & Other Such Hoodoo which engages how African American authors have shifted, recycled, and reinvented the conjure woman figure primarily in twentieth century fiction. Dr. Martin is also the author of Envisioning Black Feminist Voodoo Aesthetics: African Spirituality in American Cinema (Lexington 2016) which explores the treatment of the priestess figure in American cinema. That book won the College Language Association’s Book Award in 2017. She has appeared as an expert on E! True Hollywood Story and in PBS’s web series, Ritual. 

She has served as Assistant Editor of the College Language Association Journal and has published in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Black Women, Gender, & Families, as well as the African American National Biography. She has edited special issues of Genealogy, South Atlantic Review, a special issue of Hypatia on Conjure Feminism. She is co-editor, with Kinitra D. Brooks of The Lemonade Reader and just completed for the University Mississippi Press, Julie Dash: Interviews which will be available in October 2025. She is a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. and the mother of a precocious son, Isaiah, and a daughter–named for the youngest sister in Ntozake Shange’s Sassafras, Cypress, & Indigo. She has held faculty positions at Georgia State University, the University of Houston, and Savannah State University. She is currently Professor of African American Studies & English at the College of Charleston. 

Poet Betty Neal’s writing and voice will be familiar to jazz aficionados, as she is the famed poet at the beginning of Rashaan Roland Kirk’s composition “Theme for the Eulipions.” A legendary actress, speaker, activist, and community elder based in Newark, NJ, Neals has written lyrics to popular jazz songs and is also the author of the poetry collections Move the Air (1973) and Spirit Weaving (1977). In addition to her feature on Andromeda Turre’s From the Earth, Neals is currently collaborating with Turre’s mother, cellist Akua Dixon, on their project “One Breath Rising.”

Drew Tucker is a dynamic musician, educator, speaker, and arts administrator who blends his passion for the arts with a commitment to advocacy. As a trailblazer in the modern vibraphone movement, Drew reimagines the instrument by merging soul, funk, jazz, and hip-hop, creating a sound that is both innovative and rooted in tradition. His artistry has brought him to the stage with a diverse array of musicians, including Cory Wong, Victor Wooten, Shaun Martin, Stefon Harris, and Norah Jones. His contributions have earned him prestigious endorsements and the title of “Cultural Ambassador” from the U.S. Department of State.

Drew’s global impact is evident in his extensive tours across the U.S., South and Central America, Europe, and Asia, where he has captivated audiences with his vibrant performances. He co-founded MalletLab, a summer music intensive where he mentored over 50 students annually, collaborating with the world’s top educators to advance mallet percussion.

In addition to his performance and educational roles, Drew is committed to community development through the arts. He has played a key role in establishing and revitalizing arts centers in underserved areas, including Arts Garage and Old School Square in Delray Beach, Florida. His dedication to fostering artistic expression and accessibility is evident in his work. Currently, Drew serves as Director of the Jazz Road program for South Arts, tours with his band ‘The New Standard,’ serves on the Mallet Committee for the Percussive Arts Society, and continues to inspire as a guest clinician, speaker, and Cultural Ambassador.

Raised within the legacy of jazz’s foremost Innovators - immersed in the presence of legends such as Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Ray Charles, and Wynton Marsalis - Andromeda Turre absorbed invaluable insights into jazz’s artistry, observing their mastery firsthand from birth. As the daughter of trombonist Steve Turre and cellist Akua Dixon, this lineage not only informs her artistry but also provides a foundation from which she redefines boundaries, bridging heritage with innovation. Educated at The Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music, Turre developed a voice uniquely her own, seamlessly integrating classical, contemporary, and theatrical frameworks into jazz, reshaping the genre to engage with its modern context.

Celebrated for her emotionally resonant performances, Turre has captivated audiences across more than seventeen countries across Europe and Asia and in renowned performance spaces in America. Her international career began with a two-year residency in Japan, where she produced her debut album, Introducing Andromeda Turre, followed by years of international touring throughout Europe and Asia. Her off-Broadway work includes roles in Sleep No More, Woody Allen’s Murder Mystery Blues, and most recently, Twyla Tharp and T Bone Burnett’s How Long Blues, which premiered at Little Island in June 2024. She has also been a first call background vocalist at Saturday Night Live since 2011 as well as lending background vocals to Ray Charles and Michael Bublé.

As a composer, Turre has spent over two decades crafting works for licensing which has been used in small films, television, video games, and theater. Among her notable achievements is her score and thirteen original jazz songs for Lena: Lessons from a Lady, a musical celebrating the life of Lena Horne, which premiered at Baltimore Center Stage in 2019 and starred Broadway veteran Syndee Winters.

Throughout her career, Turre has composed large-scale original works, though resources to premiere or record them have been limited until recently. Her Emerging concert experience was conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to the shifting professional landscape many faced. The work encouraged audiences to reflect on their ikigai—a Japanese concept meaning “a reason for being,” which balances “what you love, what you’re good at what you can be paid for, and what the world needs”. Emerging premiered at The Cutting Room in NYC in 2021.

Her latest composition, From the Earth, was fully realized through grant funding. Premiering at the community center in her hometown of Bedford, NY, the suite not only showcased her artistic voice but also fostered climate action by partnering with local environmental organizations. Like all performances of From the Earth, audiences have been connected with local climate initiatives such as composting programs, free energy audits, environmental advocacy training, and free rewilding consultations. She continues to partner through collaboration with the community members heard on the album by elevating the non-profits supporting them.

One of the world’s preeminent jazz innovators, trombonist and seashellist Steve Turre, has consistently won both the Readers’ and Critics’ polls in JazzTimes, DownBeat, and Jazziz for Best Trombone and for Best Miscellaneous Instrumentalist (shells). Turre was born to Mexican-American parents and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area where he absorbed daily doses of mariachi, blues and jazz. While attending Sacramento State University, he joined the Escovedo Brothers salsa band, which began his career-long involvement with that genre.

In 1972 Steve Turre’s career picked up momentum when Ray Charles hired him to go on tour. A year later Turre’s mentor Woody Shaw brought him into Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. After his tenure with Blakey, Turre went on to work with a diverse list of musicians from the jazz, Latin, and pop worlds, including Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, J.J. Johnson, Herbie Hancock, Lester Bowie, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria, Van Morrison, Pharoah Sanders, Horace Silver, Max Roach, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The latter introduced hum to the seashell as an instrument. Soon after that, while touring in Mexico City with Woody Shaw, Turre’s relatives informed him that his ancestors similarly played the shells. Since then, Turre has incorporated seashells into his diverse musical style.

In addition to performing as a member of the Saturday Night Live Band since 1984, Turre leads several different ensembles. Sanctified Shells utilizes the seashell in a larger context, transforming his horn section into a “shell choir.” Turre’s Spring 1999 Verve release, Lotus Flower, showcases his sextet with strings. The recording explores many great standards and original compositions arranged by Turre for a unique instrumentation of trombone and shells, violin, cello, piano, bass and drums. Turre’s quartet and quintet provide a setting based in tradition and stretching the limits conceptually and stylistically. In the Summer of 2000 Telarc Records released In The Spur of the Moment, featuring Steve with three different quartets, each with a different and distinct master pianist: Ray Charles, Chucho Valdes, and Stephen Scott.

Turre’s self-titled Verve release pioneers a unique artistic vision, drawing upon jazz, Afro-Cuban, and Brazilian sources. This innovative recording also features Cassandra Wilson, Randy Brecker, Graciela, Mongo Santamaria and J.J. Johnson. Previously Turre recorded Right There and Rhythm Within, featuring Herbie Hancock, Jon Faddis, Pharoah Sanders, and Sanctified Shells, on Verve’s subsidiary label, Antilles.

Steve Turre continually evolves as a musician and arranger. He has a strong command of all musical genres and when it comes to his distinct brand of jazz, he always keeps one foot in the past and one in the future.

Aja Burrell Wood is the managing director for Berklee’s Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. Wood oversees the day-to-day operations of the institute and collaborates with founder and artistic director Terri Lyne Carrington on developing curriculum, programs, and initiatives in addition to teaching courses related to gender and justice in jazz, and curating events, among other duties.

Originally from Detroit, Michigan, Wood is an ethnomusicologist, educator, and curator with a background in development and violin performance. She has taught courses on music, history, and culture at the City University of New York (CUNY), City College, and Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music. Her work includes research on musical community among black classical musicians, women in jazz, jazz in the digital era, music and civic engagement in Harlem, and other related genres of the African diaspora such as blues, hip-hop, soul, and West African traditions. She has been a visiting fellow at the New School in addition to her role as guest lecturer at New York University and various institutions throughout New York City.

Wood was formerly the director of operations for Gate Pass Entertainment and has been the associate director of special projects and public engagement for Wynton Marsalis Enterprises. She has curated performances for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for their annual Women’s Jazz Festival. She has also served as an arts-presenting consultant and thought partner for Harlem Stage, Weeksville Heritage Center, Revive Music Group, and the Sphinx Organization.

Jifunza Wright-Carter, M.D., M.P.H. is a regenerative farmer, herbalist, integrative care physician, and the Co-founder and President of Black Oaks Center for Sustainable Renewable Living (near Chicago, Illinois). She has studied homeopathy, mind-body therapies, Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and African Healing Systems, as well as medicinal herbs, macrobiotics, the energetics of food, and raw food preparation. Dr. Wright is a graduate of Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and completed residencies at Cook County Hospital (Chicago) and Montefiore Medical Center (The Bronx, New York). For 14 years she has spearheaded getting nutrient-dense foods to high-need communities in the Chicagoland area, including Southern Cook.