This informed perspective speaks to female vocalists having been cast aside as non-musicians. They have been stigmatised as “non-musicians” for decades by instrumentalists and their input has been undermined simply because they didn’t write the song or compose the harmony and/or melody. Or maybe it’s because of the difference in the way both study music.

Meryl Streep didn’t write her dialogue for Sophie’s Choice, does that mean that she didn’t deserve an Oscar win for her performance?

Being a good vocalist relies on so many factors that take hard work and discipline. You need to learn breath support, how to use vibrato, develop tone, sustain notes, and much more. The most important thing that a vocalist needs to learn is how to engage an audience and tell a story. Sometimes that’s more important than musicianship, think of all the punk singers who couldn’t hold a tune but engaged an audience. Majority of instrumentalists I meet know so many jazz standards but don’t know the lyrics to them. A vocalist knows, and her place on the band stage is as important as everyone else’s.

This is the reason I wanted to dedicate 2 nights to female vocalists, and more generally speaking, why I’m running this series. I want to validate the contribution women have made both past and present to jazz and all its subgenres. They need to be recognised as innovators, and utilised in classrooms for their creative input. Eventually, I would like to see bands with a variety of people performing pieces from a variety of composers and lyricists. Eventually, I don’t want there to be any showcasing of women in jazz or women in pop, or women in whatever. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote at the end of her famous book The Second Sex “I hope someday this book is outdated”. The same goes for this concert series. Eventually, I want a music community that supports each other and doesn’t discriminate based on gender, race, or sexuality.