by Rick Mattingly

Gary Burton says he has known Terri Lyne Carrington practically her whole life, since she was a child prodigy in Boston when he was Vice President of Berklee College of Music. “Many child stars fail to live up to their early promise, but Terri Lyne is a glowing exception,” Burton said. “She is not only a top jazz drummer, who has collaborated with numerous major players and won her first Grammy in 2013, but she also has been active in producing recordings for other artists and made a name for herself as an innovator and now a teacher at Berklee. And all along she has been an impressive role model for women in the percussion world. 

“When I was starting out,” Burton added, “there were so few women in percussion that they were almost invisible. I don’t think Terri Lyne had ambitions to be anything other than the best drummer she could be and make the best music she could. But, in the course of winning well-deserved recognition for her musicianship, she has inspired an untold number of aspiring young musicians.”

Terri Lyne Carrington was born into a musical family on August 4, 1965 in Medford, Mass. Her grandfather was a respected drummer who played with Fats Waller. Her father, Sonny Carrington, was a saxophonist and served as president of the Boston Jazz Society. Terri Lyne began playing saxophone when she was five, but she had to stop when she lost her first set of teeth. She gravitated to drums when she found her grandfather’s old drumset in the family basement. At age 10 she became the youngest person to receive a musicians union card in Boston, and she started sitting in with jazz groups and studying with Keith Copeland. “My dad was my biggest champion,” she said. “He knew everybody, and nobody really messed with me because I was kind of protected in that way. I had access to all these great musicians. I had talent that they were willing to engage with.”

At age 11, after being invited to sit in with Oscar Peterson at the Boston Globe Jazz Festival, she received a full scholarship to attend the Berklee College of Music, where she studied with Tony Tedesco and eventually privately with Alan Dawson. “Alan would have you hum a song while you’re reading out of Stick Control,” she recalled in a 1983 interview. “Then you’d have to solo while you’re singing the song. That let him know that you knew the song. You are thinking more musically.” To this day, Terri Lyne warms up before a performance with Dawson’s “Rudimental Ritual,” which she will go through on whatever is available in the dressing room — a couch, a chair, a pillow, whatever.

During her early years she performed professionally with such artists as Clark Terry, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Nat Adderley, and in a trio with Kenny Barron and Buster Williams. At that time, she was often featured as a “kid wonder” in publications and on local and national TV shows.

Aside from the influence of her teachers, Copeland and Dawson, which drummers was she listening to and being influenced by? “All the great jazz drummers influenced me,” she says, “because you have to understand the history if you want to be a jazz drummer. In my late teens, Jack DeJohnette became my biggest influence, and a mentor as well. Roy Haynes is also one of my biggest influences. That was my foundation, even though most of the work I’ve done isn’t really straight-ahead jazz.”

She moved to New York City in 1983, and soon afterwards she played in the New York Jazz Quartet with Roland Hanna and Frank Wess. She performed with Clark Terry from 1984–85, and she worked with Pharoah Sanders in 1986 and James Moody in 1987.

While she loved mainstream jazz, that wasn’t the only music she was into. “I loved the Beatles and all the music I grew up with,” she says. “Michael Jackson and Earth, Wind and Fire were my two favorites when I was a young musician, and later Prince. Even now I listen to all kinds of music. Joni Mitchell is one of my favorite artists of all time.”

One of her most important associations was with Wayne Shorter, with whom she played at various times from 1987–95. “I knew she was going to open some doors since she was around 12 years old,” Shorter once said. “She’s one of the finest drummers in the world. She has a lot of finesse. She decorates. She makes the bass drum sing and the tenor drum sing, and the snare drum, not just rattle, she knows how to put pressure, release, and have a flowing drumset. She knows how to tell a story.”

Terri Lyne says that playing with Shorter was a dream come true. “I was 21 when I started playing with Wayne,” she says, “and that’s when my whole life changed. He was a major influence, a mentor, and a very important person in my life. He had that effect on most people,” she adds.

Shorter was not one for telling the musicians in his band how to play. “A lot of leaders hire people they admire and trust,” Carrington explains. “And nobody writes drum charts, unless it’s for a big band or a song that needs a specific rhythm. So it’s always a matter of trust that the drummer will come up with something. When jazz was more swing oriented, it was just important to have a great feel. But then the music changed, and the drummer had a lot of freedom to figure out what to play and to direct the sound of the piece and the sound of the band. So, in general, a band is only as good as its drummer because there is so much weight on what the drummer is doing in a jazz setting. Now you have to be super creative; how you construct your drum parts, in essence, is like you are producing and composing. The drumming was never considered part of what made a song until recently, with hip-hop, where when somebody made a beat, within that beat was a harmony base and a rhythm. In jazz, it’s the same thing. The drummer is going to bring something that will help create the sound of the piece.

“With Wayne,” she continues, “I would look at the score. It really taught me how to follow music differently as opposed to working with lead sheets. So I would choose how to orchestrate it. I could work off the bass line, or I could choose to accent something in the melody, or I might look at where the chords fall, because if they are not falling with the bass, I have a choice. So it was great getting into looking at music that way.”

Carrington led her own group from 1987–88, during which time she released her first album as leader, Real Life Story, which was nominated for a Grammy. In ’88 she also worked with David Sanborn, John Scofield, and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pederson. During the 1980s she recorded with Rufus Reid, Mulgrew Miller, Scofield, and several other artists.

She then moved to Los Angeles, where she gained recognition on late-night TV as the house drummer for both the Arsenio Hall Show and Quincy Jones’s VIBE TV show, hosted by Sinbad. She welcomed the opportunity to play different styles of music on those shows. In a 1989 interview, she pointed out that many of the jazz musicians she had played with in her youth were old enough to be her father — or even her grandfather. “I had a lot of great experiences playing with them,” she told writer Robyn Flans. “But I wanted to make a change. I really wanted to play music other than straight-ahead jazz. I felt old doing that — meaning no disrespect. When playing traditional bebop and jazz, it felt like being a classical musician.”

During the 1990s, she played with a variety of artists, including Joe Sample, Al Jarreau, Herbie Hancock, Danilo Pérez, and Mike Stern. She appeared on numerous recordings with such artists as Eric Marienthal, Niels Lan Doky, John Scofield, Dianne Reeves, Cassandra Wilson, Mulgrew Miller, Patrice Rushen, George Duke, Diane Schuur, and many others.

After not releasing a solo recording in over a decade, in 2002 she released Jazz is a Spirit, followed by Structure in 2004, and in 2008 she released More To Say… (Real Life Story: NextGen). In 2011 she released the Grammy-Award-winning album The Mosaic Project, featuring a cast of all-star women instrumentalists and vocalists, and in 2013 she released Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue, which also earned a Grammy Award, establishing her as the first woman ever to win in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category. 

In 2019 Carrington released Waiting Game with her group Social Science, which reflected her concern about the state of the world reaching what she called “red level, the danger zone.” The double album expresses an unflinching, inclusive, and compassionate view of humanity’s breaks and bonds through an eclectic program melding jazz, R&B, indie rock, contemporary improvisation, and hip-hop. Waiting Game was nominated for a 2021 Grammy Award and was celebrated as one of the year’s best jazz releases by Rolling Stone, DownBeat, The Boston Globe, and Popmatters. The album garnered three DownBeat critics poll awards: Album of the Year, Group of the Year, and Artist of the Year. Carrington was also named Artist of the Year by the Jazz Times critics polls, The Boston Globe, and the Jazz Journalists Association.

Carrington has performed on over 100 recordings and has been a role model and advocate for young women and men internationally through her teaching and touring careers. Over the years she has toured or recorded with such artists as Stan Getz, Woody Shaw, Diana Krall, Cassandra Wilson, James Moody, the Yellowjackets, esperanza spalding, Kris Davis, Chaka Khan, Natalie Cole, and Nancy Wilson.

She has also had success as a producer and songwriter, collaborating with such artists as Gino Vannelli, Tia Fuller, Lakecia Benjamin, Dianne Reeves, Siedah Garrett, Marilyn Scott, and a special song commissioned by the Atlanta Committee for the 1996 Olympic Games, “Always Reach for Your Dreams,” performed by Peabo Bryson. In some respects, her approach to playing drums at recording sessions was good training for becoming a producer. “I was always the one in the studio saying, ‘Let’s try this’ and making suggestions,” she says. “I was always interested in the total picture of the music as opposed to what I was playing.”

Discussing her own drumming, Terri Lyne says she is happiest when playing with other musicians and doesn’t actually practice very often, or at least for hours at a time, because she doesn’t like playing by herself — an attitude reflected by the fact that she says she doesn’t like to play drum solos. Although early on she was somewhat typecast as a straight-ahead jazz drummer, she has done her share of funk and pop drumming. Terri Lyne often uses matched grip, which is certainly not a hallmark of a typical mainstream jazz drummer. “Keith [Copeland] used matched grip when he played funk,” she notes, “and I started using it to get more power when I played groove-oriented styles. I use matched grip sort of 50/50. If I was playing lighter, I didn’t have as much control with matched grip, so I would switch back to traditional. But you have to practice both grips to stay loose with each of them.”

Whereas some jazz drummers are more cymbal players than “drummers,” except when they are playing drum solos, Terri Lyne tends to incorporate a lot of drums into her timekeeping. “I sometimes feel I use the cymbals too much,” she says, laughing. “When I’m teaching, I try to get people to play the entire instrument. The drumset has a large sound palette, so use all of the sounds as much as possible. I also try to incorporate other sounds into grooves, and make use of the percussive element, like playing with mallets or using bells or shakers to get more textures. I think it’s important to continually expand and be creative.”

n 2019 Terri Lyne received The Doris Duke Artist Award in recognition of her past and ongoing contributions to jazz. Carrington has received honorary doctorates from Manhattan School of Music, York University, and Berklee College of Music, where she teaches. She has been very active in the fight against gender inequality — in the jazz world in particular. 

Given the success Carrington has had since her early years, one might assume that she was not subject to the kind of discrimination from which other female drummers have suffered, especially during those years when a female drummer was a rarity in any style of music. But she says she certainly has encountered gender discrimination in her life. “It’s the world we live in,” she says, matter-of-factly. “But I’ve always been confident, and not afraid to stand up to people and claim my rights. And I’ve often taken the initiative to create my own opportunities.” As a ten-year-old, she wasn’t afraid to approach Buddy Rich, even after being told he was in a bad mood. He was so impressed with her that he invited her to sit in with his band, and he convinced Slingerland and Zildjian to endorse her. 

Conversations with female students (“stories of harassment, of not being included, of no access”) led her to start the Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice at Berklee College of Music, which recruits, teaches, mentors, and advocates for musicians seeking to study jazz, with both gender justice and racial justice as guiding principles. “I tell women that jazz doesn’t just belong to men,” she says. “It’s for everyone.”

While planning an event for the Institute a couple of years ago, Carrington sought out tunes by female composers, but finding sheet music proved to be a challenge. “That pointed to a really big problem,” she told The New York Times. “Of course, I played with women who wrote their own material, so that was a given to me: that women are composers.” But, she added, she hadn’t fully realized how much learning about jazz and jazz composition was based on “material that was all written by men. People will often say, ‘Well, I would play some songs written by women, but I don’t know any.’” 

She decided to tackle that problem head-on and compiled New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets by Women Composers, an illustration of how she has worked to fight for inclusivity and raise the voice of women, trans, and non-binary jazz musicians. The book is published by Berklee Press and distributed by Hal Leonard, publisher of The Real Book. Composers represented in New Standards encompass a wide range of eras and styles, including Lil Hardin Armstrong, Mary Lou Williams, Alice Coltrane, Abbey Lincoln, Geri Allen, Dorothy Ashby, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Nicole Mitchell, Cassandra Wilson, Nubya Garcia, Jamie Branch, Tia Fuller, Maria Schneider, Gretchen Parlato, and Luciana Souza.

Accompanying the book is her album New Standards vol.1, featuring 11 selections from the songbook with an all-star band. In 2023, the album won a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. Carrington also curated a multi-media installation to accompany and expand on the message of the New Standards book and album. The installation premiered at Detroit’s Carr Center, and she was later featured at the Emerson Contemporary Media Art Gallery in Boston. 

Carrington has also curated musical presentations at Harvard University, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the John F. Kennedy Center, and she has enjoyed multi-disciplinary collaborations with esteemed visual artists Mickalene Thomas and Carrie Mae Weems. Terri Lyne serves as co-executive producer and musical director for the Jazz Music Awards and is a 2022 inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. And in 2022, she authored a children’s book titled Three of a Kind, on the making of the Allen Carrington Spalding trio.

“Terri Lyne is an innovator on many levels and a complete musician, composer, producer, educator, and activist who is bringing much-needed change to gender equality for women in jazz to the forefront of the jazz community,” says PAS Hall of Fame member Jack DeJohnette. “I am extremely proud and happy that Terri Lyne is being recognized by the PAS for her great contributions to creativity and humanity.”