Jamie Baum

Jamie Baum is an American flautist who has garnered praise for her promotion of the use of the flute in jazz music, and also for her cross-cultural creative projects. Mainly involved with jazz performance and composition, Baum also has increasingly explored projects, performances, and tours that engage with classical, new music, and Brazilian and Latin music. Every year since 1998, Baum has been listed in the DownBeat Critics Polls, and in 2012 she won “#1 Rising Star.”

Biography

Baum grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut in a musical family. Baum's mother, Edith, had studied piano and trombone at Juilliard and her parents often took her to New York City for Jazz shows.^[1] Baum attended the New England Conservatory of Music's "Third Stream" program that combines jazz study with the European classical music tradition.^[2] While there, Baum studied with Jaki Byard,^[3] which in later years inspired her to organize the Yard Byard Project, consisting of scores that Byard had given her when she had been his student. Baum is a member of the Manhattan School of Music's faculty and also teaches in The New School Jazz Program, as well as giving private lessons and workshops on improvisation and jazz flute technique. She has brought the flute into a position of greater respect as an instrument within Jazz, through her creative projects and ensembles.^[4]

Career highlights

• 1994 Baum was given a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts - Music Composition, to support writing a series of new compositions.
• 1999 Baum founded the Jamie Baum Septet, including Ralph Alessi, George Colligan and Jeff Hirshfield.
• 1999-2003 Baum toured South America, Europe and South Asia on behalf of the Department of State/Kennedy Center Jazz Ambassador program.^[5]

References

External links

• New England Jazz History Database Audio Interview