Nov 17, 2023 4:00 pm

Mobile since her birth in Singapore, composer, saxophonist, and artivist Caroline Davis’s music covers a wide range of styles, owed to her shifting environment as a child. As a leader, she has released six albums: Live Work & Play (2012), Doors: Chicago Storylines (2015), Heart Tonic (2018), Alula (2019), Anthems (2019), and Portals (2021). She won Downbeat’s Critic’s Poll Rising Star Alto-Saxophonist (2018) and was listed in Downbeat’s Readers Poll (2021). Her work has garnered much praise from NPR, The New York Times, The Wire, DownBeat, JazzTimes, and many international publications.

Davis is active as both a side-person and a leader in a diverse set of music communities (jazz, improvised music, modern classical, R&B, folk). Davis has worked with Lee Konitz, Angelica Sanchez, The Femme Jam, Matt Mitchell, Terry Riley, Miles Okazaki, and Billy Kaye, to name a few. Her collaborations include My Tree (with Ben Hoffmann) and Persona (with Rob Clearfield).

Awards and recognitions over the years have placed Caroline in various mentorship communities: IAJE’s Sisters in Jazz (2006), the Kennedy Center’s Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Program (2011), and Jen Shyu/Sara Serpa’s Mutual Mentorship Program (2020). Davis was the recipient of CMA’s Performance Plus Grant (2021), NYFA’s City Artist Corps Grant (2021), Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2019-2020); and she has participated in several residency programs, including fellow-in-residence at The Jazz Gallery (2022) and composer-in-residence at MacDowell (2019). Her compositional practice integrates music with the cognitive sciences, anatomical structures, and the brain, influenced by her Ph.D in Music Cognition. Davis is an advocate for social justice in the realm of gender (Jazz & Gender at The New School and This Is a Movement) as well as in the abolitionist movement (Justice for Keith Lamar).

As an educator, Caroline brings her unique knowledge of music and psychology to her teaching. She has been on the faculty at Litchfield Jazz Camp for 15 years, Stanford Jazz Institute for 6 years, and an educator at The New School, Northwestern University, Harvard University, DePaul University, Columbia College, University of Texas at Arlington, and Jazz at Lincoln Center.

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