NEA Jazz Master Terri Lyne Carrington And Band Social Science Earn 2021 Grammy Nomination

Drummer, producer, and composer Terri Lyne Carrington and band Social Science have received a prestigious nomination for the 63rd annual Grammy Awards in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category for their 2020 double album project, Waiting Game, released on Motema Music.

Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science is the drummer's collaborative project with pianist Aaron Parks and guitarist Matthew Stevens, along with multi-instrumentalist Morgan Guerin, vocalist Debo Ray, and DJ/rapper Kassa Overall. The album's special guests include Esperanza Spalding, Nicholas Payton, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Rapsody, Meshell Ndegeocello, Maimouna Youssef, Raydar Ellis, and Kokayi. The slate of nominations was announced November 24, 2020, by The Recording Academy during a special hour-long livestream on GRAMMY.com. The 63rd annual Grammy Awards will take place online on Sunday, January 31, 2021, recognizing excellence in music released in late 2019 and 2020.

"We are beyond thrilled about this project being recognized this year by the Recording Academy," says Carrington. "We poured our hearts and souls into this music, speaking our truths without knowing what 2020 had in store for our country. So happy our work resonated with so many people because unification is critical right now and music has the power to heal and create bridges."

Aaron Parks notes, "This band is like a family and I'm grateful to be able to create music with them that feels pertinent to the moment we're living through, looking squarely at many of society's ills and searching for new ways to tell difficult stories through song."

"A sincere thank you to everyone who lent their ears to this record and who connected with the music and the message," says Matthew Stevens. "This nomination is a testament to the power of diverse collaboration to address current injustices and to imagine a better future."

Carrington is already a three-time Grammy Award winner, earning Best Vocal Jazz Album in 2012 for The Mosaic Project; Best Instrumental Jazz Album in 2014 for Money Jungle: Provocative In Blue; and Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2015 for producing jazz vocalist Dianne Reeve's Beautiful Life. Carrington was the first woman to receive a Grammy Award in the Jazz Instrumental Album category.

In October 2020, Carrington was named a 2021 NEA Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. The National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship is the nation's highest honor in jazz.

From a child prodigy to a world-class musician, Carrington has a wealth of diverse experience as a multi-genre performer, composer, producer, and educator. Her most recent album, Waiting Game with Social Science, boasted a triple-crown win in Downbeat magazine's International Critics Poll, for Artist of the Year, Album of the Year, and Group of the Year, making her the first woman instrumentalist to win simultaneously in all three categories in the 68-year history of the magazine.

Carrington has received honorary doctorates from Manhattan School of Music and Berklee College of Music, where she currently serves as the founder and Artistic Director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. The Institute recruits, teaches, mentors, and advocates for musicians seeking to study jazz with gender justice and racial justice as guiding principles, and asks the important question, "What would jazz sound like in a culture without patriarchy?" She also serves as Artistic Director for Berklee's Summer Jazz Workshop, and as Artistic Director of The Carr Center in Detroit, MI. In 2019, Carrington was granted the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award in recognition of her past and ongoing contributions to jazz music.

Terri Lyne Carrington started her professional career in Massachusetts at 10 years old, when she became the youngest person to receive a union card in Boston. She was featured as a "kid wonder" in many publications and on local and national TV shows. After studying under a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music, Carrington worked as an in-demand musician in New York City and later 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' "VIBE TV" show, hosted by Sinbad. To date, Carrington has performed on more than 100 recordings and has been a role model and advocate for young women and men internationally through her teaching and touring careers. She has worked extensively with jazz giants and legends including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, Woody Shaw, Clark Terry, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, James Moody, Joe Sample, Esperanza Spalding, and many more.

For more information about Terri Lyne Carrington, go to terrilynecarrington.com.

For more information about The Recording Academy, please visit www.grammy.com.

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