The eighth and final show of The Alluvion 2024 Jazz Series features Ellen Rowe's incredible, all women octet. Her latest project: Momentum, Portraits of Women in Motion includes some of the highest level women in jazz today.

“Momentum" is an album project that was released in 2019. Each piece is a tribute to and musical portrait of women heroes of composer/pianist Ellen Rowe’s in the areas of music, sports, social justice, environmental advocacy and politics. The pieces are orchestrated for varying sizes of chamber jazz ensemble, ranging from quintet to octet. In addition to creating the album, the ensemble of nationally recognized female jazz artists tours, with the goal of performing the music with younger women jazz students, giving them the opportunity to play with the band and get mentored by the professional musicians.

Piano/Bandleader/Marathon Runner: Ellen Rowe, jazz pianist and composer, is currently Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan. She is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, where she studied with Rayburn Wright and Bill Dobbins. Prior to her appointment in Michigan, she served as Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Connecticut.

Alto Sax: Lisa Parrott is an expatriate Australian who has shown that she can succeed on the competitive New York jazz scene, alto and baritone saxophonist Lisa Parrott has been based in New York since the early '90s.

Tenor Sax: Virginia Mayhew is a saxophonist-composer-arranger that has been an active participant in the New York jazz scene since 1987. A native of San Francisco, Virginia came to New York to enroll in the New School's Jazz Performance program, and was awarded its Zoot Sims Memorial Scholarship. In the course of her career, Virginia has worked with such renowned artists as Earl "Fatha" Hines, Cab Calloway, Frank Zappa, James Brown, Norman Simmons, Al Grey, Junior Mance, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Doc Cheatam, Joe Williams, Leon Parker, Clark Terry, Terry Gibbs, Kenny Barron, Chico O'Farrill, Dena DeRose, Ingrid Jensen, Claudio Roditi, and many others.

Baritone Sax: Kaleigh Wilder is a baritone saxophonist and multi instrumentalist, improviser and composer based in Detroit, MI. Originally from Northwest Indiana, she moved to Michigan for graduate school where she then found refuge in Detroit’s music community. It is hard to place her music into a cut and dried genre, so Wilder likes to play from what she knows in her body—what her hands, ears, and inner child remember. Using timbral extremes that shift between raw and polished, abrasive and sensitive, discomfort and catharsis, Wilder channels her lived experiences into sound to communicate viscerally. She hopes to amplify in the listener their own understanding of music and self.

Trumpet: Nadje Noordhuis With a trumpet sound possessing a "beyond-category beauty” (Dan Bilawsky, All About Jazz), Australian-born trumpeter/composer Nadje Noordhuis’ deeply-felt, clarion tone and evocative compositional gift meld classical rigor, jazz expression, and world music accents into a sound that is distinctively her own. From Sydney, Australia, and based in New York for twenty years, Noordhuis was a semi-finalist in the 2007 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Trumpet Competition and the 2010 National Jazz Awards in Australia. She has played on two GRAMMY-winning recordings, and six GRAMMY-nominated albums across a variety of musical genres. She tours with the Maria Schneider Orchestra, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Anat Cohen Tentet, Matt Wilson’s Honey and Salt, and Fred Hersch’s Leaves of Grass project.

Trombone: Melissa Gardiner has been described by Curtis Fuller as technically creative and emotionally powerful. Her improvisation is inspiring and motivating for the listener, and she draws you in with a raw expression that directly relates to life experience. Throughout her career she has worked with several notable musicians including Aretha Franklin, The Tempatations, Geri Allen, Wycliffe Gordon, Steve Turre, Gerald Wilson, Patti Austin, Tia Fuller, Ingrid Jensen, Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, and Vulfpeck, who she will be joining next when they headline at Madison Square Garden in September 2019.

Bass: Marion Hayden Born in Detroit, MI, a crucible of jazz, Marion Hayden is one of the nation’s finest proponents of the acoustic bass. Mentored by master trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, Hayden began performing jazz at the age of 15. She has performed with such diverse luminaries as Bobby McFerrin, Nancy Wilson, Geri Allen, Regina Carter, Steve Turre, Lester Bowie, David Allen Grier, James Carter, Dorothy Donegan, Joe Williams, Lionel Hampton, Frank Morgan, Jon Hendricks, Hank Jones, Bobby Hutcherson, Larry Willis, Vanessa Rubin, Sheila Jordan, Mulgrew Miller, Annie Ross and many others. She is a co-founder of the touring jazz ensemble Straight Ahead- the first all woman jazz ensemble signed to Atlantic Records. She is a member of the Detroit International Jazz Festival All-Star Ambassadors touring ensemble.

Drums: Tina Raymond is an accomplished drummer, composer, educator, and bandleader based out of Los Angeles, CA. A unique voice in the contemporary improvised music scene, Raymond blends traditional jazz vocabulary with African poly-rhythm and classical drum technique.

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