Jay Clayton is an internationally acclaimed avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 vocalist and jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 educator.

Early years

After studying at Miami University

Miami University

Miami University is a coeducational public research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the 10th oldest public university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded four years after Ohio University. In its 2012 edition, U.S...

 in Oxford, Ohio

Oxford, Ohio

Oxford is a city in northwestern Butler County, Ohio, United States, in the southwestern portion of the state. It lies in Oxford Township, originally called the College Township. The population was 21,943 at the 2000 census. This college town was founded as a home for Miami University. Oxford...

 she came to New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 taking lessons from musicians such as Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy

Steve Lacy , born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone....

. Together with her husband, percussionist Frank Clayton, she presented Jazz at the Loft in their home in about 1967: Sam Rivers

Sam Rivers

Samuel Carthorne Rivers , is an American jazz musician and composer. He performs on soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, flute, harmonica and piano....

, Cecil McBee

Cecil McBee

Cecil McBee is an American post bop jazz bassist, described by the Guinness Who's Who of Jazz as "a full-toned bassist who creates rich, singing phrases in a wide range of contemporary jazz contexts." Allmusic called him "One of post-bop's most advanced and versatile bassists".-Biography:McBee...

, Joanne Brackeen

Joanne Brackeen

Joanne Brackeen is an American jazz pianist and music educator.-Biography:She was born Joanne Grogan in Ventura, California. She attended the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, but devoted herself to jazz by imitating Frankie Carle albums...

, Dave Liebman

Dave Liebman

Dave Liebman is an American saxophonist and flautist. In June 2010, he received a NEA Jazz Masters lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts.-Biography:...

, Pete Yellin

Pete Yellin

Peter Michael Yellin is an American jazz saxophonist, flautist, and clarinetist.Yellin is the son of an NBC studio pianist. He turned down an athletic scholarship at the University of Denver to study at Juilliard under Joseph Allard and Harold Bennett...

, Hal Galper

Hal Galper

-Biography:He studied classical piano as a boy, but switched to jazz which he studied at the Berklee College of Music from 1955 to 1958. He hung out at Herb Pomeroy's club, The Stable, hearing local Boston musicians like Jackie Byard, Alan Dawson and Sam Rivers. Galper started sitting in and became...

, Jeanne Lee

Jeanne Lee

Jeanne Lee was an American jazz singer, poet and composer. Best known for a wide range of vocal styles she mastered, Lee collaborated with numerous distinguished composers and performers which included Gunter Hampel, Ran Blake, Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, and many...

, Bob Moses

Bob Moses (musician)

Rakalam Bob Moses is an American jazz drummer born in New York City.Moses played with Roland Kirk in 1964-65 while he was still a teenager. In 1966 he and Larry Coryell formed The Free Spirits, a jazz fusion ensemble, and from 1967 to 1969 he played in Gary Burton's quartet...

, Junie Booth, John Gilmore

John Gilmore (musician)

John Gilmore was an American jazz tenor saxophone player best-known for his long tenure as a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra...

, and Jane Getz

Jane Getz

Jane Getz is an American jazz pianist and session musician.Getz learned classical piano as a child and began playing jazz at the age of nine. She lived in California early in life but when she was sixteen moved to New York City...

 were among the featured musicians. Clayton also began to earn her own reputation as an avant-garde singer, developing her personal wordless vocabulary.

Musical career

Clayton's pioneering vocal explorations placed her at the forefront of the free jazz movement and loft scene in the 1970s, where she counted among the first singers to incorporate poetry and electronics into her improvisations. She performed and recorded with Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams

Muhal Richard Abrams is an American educator, administrator, composer, arranger, clarinetist, cellist, and jazz pianist in the Free jazz medium. Abrams compresses both contemporary and traditional ideas into lean, elegant pieces.- Biography :Abrams attended DuSable High School in Chicago...

, with John Fischer

John Fischer (pianist)

John Fischer is a pianist, composer and visual artist. He is also a pioneer in the field of computer art. During the 1970s, during the loft jazz era in New York City, Fischer ran a performance loft and gallery known as Environ....

's Interface, and Byron Morris's Unity. For a long time she was a member of the Steve Reich

Steve Reich

Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...

 ensemble, performing the compositions of the minimalist composer. She was one of the first singers to record composer John Cage

John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

’s vocal music.

Clayton's own performance dates appear under the heading the Jay Clayton Project, while she titles her work with other esteemed vocalists Different Voices. She co-leads a trio, Outskirts, with drummer Jerry Granelli and saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom

Jane Ira Bloom

Jane Ira Bloom is an American jazz soprano saxophonist and composer.-Biography:Bloom was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She began as a pianist and drummer, later switching to the alto saxophone, and eventually settling on the soprano saxophone as her primary instrument...

.

With more than 40 recordings to her credit, Clayton has appeared alongside such formidable artists as Bud Shank

Bud Shank

Clifford Everett "Bud" Shank, Jr. was an American alto saxophonist and flautist. He rose to prominence in the early 1950s playing lead alto and flute in Stan Kenton's Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra and throughout the decade worked in various small jazz combos. He spent the 1960s as a first...

, Charlie Haden

Charlie Haden

Charles Edward Haden is an American jazz musician. He is a double bassist, probably best known for his long association with saxophonist Ornette Coleman...

, Kirk Nurock, Stanley Cowell

Stanley Cowell

Stanley Cowell is an American jazz pianist and founder of the Strata-East Records label. He played with Roland Kirk while studying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and later with Marion Brown, Max Roach, Bobby Hutcherson, Clifford Jordan, Harold Land, Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz...

, Lee Konitz

Lee Konitz

Lee Konitz is an American jazz composer and alto saxophonist born in Chicago, Illinois.Generally considered one of the driving forces of Cool Jazz, Konitz has also performed successfully in bebop and avant-garde settings...

, Julian Priester

Julian Priester

Julian Priester is an American jazz trombonist and composer.He has played with many artists including Sun Ra, Max Roach, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock.-Biography:...

, George Cables

George Cables

George Andrew Cables is a jazz pianist, born November 14, 1944 in New York City.He has played with Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, and others.His own recordings include the 1980 Cables Vision with Freddie Hubbard among others....

, Gary Bartz

Gary Bartz

Gary Bartz is an American alto and soprano saxophonist and clarinetist.Bartz graduated from the Baltimore City College high school and The Juilliard School...

, Gary Peacock

Gary Peacock

Gary Peacock is an American jazz double-bassist.-Biography:After military service in Germany, in the early sixties he worked on the west coast with Barney Kessel, Bud Shank, Paul Bley and Art Pepper, then moved to New York. He worked there with Bley, the Bill Evans trio , and Albert Ayler's trio...

 and Fred Hersch

Fred Hersch

Fred Hersch is a contemporary American jazz pianist who has become a consistent and highly demanded performer on the international jazz scene....

, as well as fellow vocalists Jeanne Lee, Lauren Newton

Lauren Newton (singer)

Lauren Amber Newton is an avant-garde jazz and contemporary classical singer, composer and teacher, best known as a founding member of the Vienna Art Orchestra....

, Urszula Dudziak

Urszula Dudziak

Urszula Bogumiła Dudziak-Urbaniak is a leading Polish jazz vocalist. She has worked with such artists as Krzysztof Komeda, Michał Urbaniak , Gil Evans, Archie Shepp, and Lester Bowie...

, and Bobby McFerrin

Bobby McFerrin

Robert "Bobby" McFerrin, Jr. is an American vocalist and conductor. He is best known for his 1988 hit song "Don't Worry, Be Happy". He is a ten-time Grammy Award winner.-Life:...

. In 1971, Clayton began leading her own workshops, partly together with Michelle Berne and Jeanne Lee.

Teaching career

From 1981 onwards, Clayton taught at Cornish College of the Arts

Cornish College of the Arts

-Library:The library at Cornish College specializes in art, dance, design, music, performance production, and theatre. As of 2011 it holds 4700 CDs, 40,000 books, has 2,200 videos, and subscribes to 154 periodicals...

 in Seattle, Washington for 20 years. In addition to that tenure, Clayton taught for several semesters at New York's City College

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

, at several European universities (Graz (Austria), Berlin, Cologne, Munich). She developed the vocal program for the Banff Center (Canada), which she co-taught with fellow vocalist Sheila Jordan

Sheila Jordan

Sheila Jordan is an American jazz singer and songwriter. Jordan has recorded as a session musician with an array of critically acclaimed artists in addition to a notable solo career....

. The two are also teaching together at Vermont Jazz Workshop and at Jazz in July (at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst). Clayton has brought her masterclasses to the Manhattan School of Music

Manhattan School of Music

The Manhattan School of Music is a major music conservatory located on the Upper West Side of New York City. The school offers degrees on the bachelors, masters, and doctoral levels in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition...

 and the Peabody Conservatory. Her book, Sing Your Story: A Practical Guide for Learning and Teaching the Art of Jazz Singing, was published in 2001.

Other activities

In 1979, Clayton acted as the artistic director for the first ever Women in Jazz Festival (produced by Cobi Narita). She served as a consultant for ABC Cable's Women in Jazz, compiling footage for the series. Clayton received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

, Meet the Composer

Meet the Composer

Meet the Composer is an American organization founded in 1974 by the composer John Duffy as a project of the New York State Council on the Arts. It seeks to assist composers in making a living through writing music by sponsoring commissioning, residency, education, and audience interaction...

, and Chamber Music America.

External links

• http://www.jayclayton.com