Where Spirit Meets Groove: NEA Jazz Master Terri Lyne Carrington Previews her 2026 Newport Jazz Performance and New Album

Whether it is Billie Holiday singing of the strange fruit of the lynched hanging from trees or John Coltrane’s solemn remembrance of the innocent children lost at Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, mourning racism is an inexorable element of jazz’s DNA. But far too many overlook the other side of the equation. These lamentations seldom result in passivity. Instead, they fuel responses that leave behind the horrors of the past and present. Consider Charles Mingus’ taunting of anti-integrationist Orville Faubus or Archie Shepp’s calls for support for the Attica uprising. As much as the music is reflective, it is also responsive and proactive. While never minimizing the seriousness of racial injustice, no one person has a single classifiable identity. Race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, faith, personal interests, and so many other factors make each of us unique. Even within a musical form where racial matters prove essential, these other identifiers far too often remain marginalized. The sophomore release by Terri Lyne Carrington’s Social Science, Trip the Night Fantastic (Candid, 2026), reminds listeners of many of these other factors worthy of expression.  

Like Social Science’s first album, the Grammy-nominated Waiting Game (Motéma, 2019), Trip addresses some of the most cogent political topics of our time. This outing casts a wide net that encompasses climate change, animal rights, abolition, and the protection of children, to name a few. The Wild West aestheticized “Solidarity Song” even takes a powerful stand on the partisan divisions ravaging our country. A potential risk of orating on such heavy topics is that the messages predominate the conversation. But never is Trip a staid or preachy lecture. Instead, Carrington skillfully relies upon her place as a master of rhythm to produce music that stimulates the body as much as the mind. As the title Trip the Night Fantastic itself suggests, danceability is hardly an afterthought.

The distinct meeting of groove and insight is noticeable throughout Trip. But perhaps the best starting point would be honing in on two pieces that most reflect Carrington’s other work. As founder and Artistic Director of the esteemed Berklee College of Music’s Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, few have fought for the eradication of gender barriers in music as much as Carrington. Her book, New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets by Women Composers (Hal Leonard, 2022), and its associated album (Candid, 2022), shone a light on the incredible compositional prowess of female composers that the jazz industry far too often minimizes or ignores completely. She continues to share these gifts by female composers with the world as she begins work on a second version of the book and album. Two pieces particularly address issues related to gender, and both well reflect her unique marriage of groove and message.

The first, “Identity Song,” starts with a trippy spiral of drums and piano that soon turns into a heavy bass line, short electronic cymbals, and Brandee Younger’s harp. Guest Michael Mayo’s lyrics advocate that people be free to be who they are and love who they want to, regardless of society’s limitations. The piece then seamlessly flows into Aaron Parks’ piano solo. It clears the way for a rap by Nappy Nina reiterating Mayo’s messages but over a far more dire and imposing backdrop, perhaps a reflection of the difficulty of actually sticking to those messages among a less receptive public. Overall, the piece celebrates the malleability of identity as the music itself changes form, evoking trap, R&B, avant-garde experimentation, and the blues.

The other, “Autonomy Song,” starts with a bossa sway and Matthew Stevens’ dreamy guitar before gradually moving into a ‘90s R&B slow jam. Younger’s ethereal harp gives the whole outing an otherworldly feel. If one were to ignore the lyrics, the piece would evoke a high-school-era slow dance. But the refrain of “It’s My Body, I Can Do What I Want To” is repeated in a way that shows matters go far deeper than the simplistic heartbroken party Lesley Gore once sang of. Those fully listening to the message will find prose about bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, freedom from gender violence, and a pride that transcends the false perceptions of physical perfection forced by our mainstream media.

A careful observer would note that both “Autonomy Song” and “Identity Song” excel because of the leader’s ability to coherently blur sounds from several stylistic backgrounds. The album’s explosive opener, “Riddim Song,” even overtly examines the musical branches out of West Africa to a broader pan-African artistic diaspora. It does so while sliding back and forth between more traditional beats and seemingly synthesized ones. The song pulls drum circles, afrobeat, jazz, electronic music, hip hop, and even disco all into a singular equation. The effortlessness with which Carrington can pull a piece like this off attests to her skills as both a composer and a drummer, roles that have earned her the highest designation as an NEA Jazz Master. They are also what have led her to a career collaborating with such heavyweights as Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Lester Bowie, and many others. But solely focusing on Carrington would also be a mistake. Her younger collaborators – Parks, Stevens, and multi-instrumentalist Morgan Guerin – are more than mere sidemen, working directly with Carrington to shape the sound of these pieces.

In all, Trip the Night Fantastic is an album worth falling over. It is as much a potent call to action as an inescapable invitation to the dance floor. We sat down with Carrington to discuss how Trip came to be, Social Science’s first full post-release performance of the album’s music at Newport, the enduring spirits of Jack DeJohnette and Wayne Shorter, and much more.

PostGenre: Do you remember the first time you learned of the Newport Jazz Festival? Or, as someone growing up in New England and into jazz at a young age, has it always seemingly been sitting in the background?

Terri Lyne Carrington: It’s always been there. I remember going once as a kid and seeing Lionel Hampton. I can’t remember the exact year or who else played, though I was fairly young. But yeah, it’s always kind of been there.

PG: And the first time you actually performed there was with esperanza spalding in 2011. Is that right?

TLC: Correct, which is so weird.

PG: Why is that weird? Because it took that long for you to perform there?

TLC: Yeah, I mean, it took so long because they weren’t checking for me. But that also  really speaks to the state of jazz. Especially then, women artists are not getting the same opportunities. And that has to do with whoever is running artistic direction and all of that. And even for esperanza, while she is an amazing bassist, she’s also a vocalist. So, booking her back then also further supported the narrative that women sing jazz and not play instruments.

PG: Because of your work at Berklee, you are deeply attuned to those gender disparities in the jazz industry. Are things improving?

TLC: Oh, they’re definitely improving. We, and other people, have done a lot of work to help make things improve. It is collective work. And the times are changing. It’s a natural arc for things to shift.

But has it shifted to real equality? That’s a whole other conversation because I feel like women who are successful are mostly those who assimilate well and play as well as the next guy, so to say. I think we’re now at a place where people have to start to hear the music differently. They need to start to think about the music differently. They need to welcome a feminine aesthetic in the art form. Look at it more like something that may have been missing all of these years, and how do we change things, because people are so nostalgic? When we think about all the old great records and all the music that’s been created, it has mostly been by men. We need to think a little differently about all of that to be able to be open to a different sound possibility. That’s the challenge right now.

PG: It’s amazing because jazz supposedly prides itself on the free expression of diverse voices, yet we are still not at equality.

TLC: I mean, that’s the whole thing when they talk about jazz and democracy. I’m like, well, sort of, but democratic for whom? Who’s part of that democracy?

PG: To go back to Newport, your second performance there was in 2017. It was supposed to be by the ACS trio with esperanza and Geri Allen. But after Geri passed away a few weeks before the performance, the set turned into a tribute to her. It must have been emotionally difficult to perform under those circumstances.

TLC: Yeah, it was really rough. But we came together with people she was close to – Jason [Moran], Christian [Sands], and Vijay [Iyer] – to tribute Geri. Because we played the same material that we had been playing with Geri, it also pointed to Geri’s genius. Her music is not the easiest thing in the world to play. It’s almost impossible to jump into it without really rehearsing and spending some time with it. And we didn’t have time to rehearse and all that. It wasn’t an easy thing to pull off.

PG: The next time you were at Newport was with Social Science in 2021. It was right after the [COVID-19] pandemic, with the festival taking place before a spread-out half-capacity audience of people wearing masks. It must have been very strange to return to live music at that point.

TLC: We were all just happy to be back out there. But it was definitely odd. And we weren’t even used to playing with other people so much at that point after such a long absence. It took some time to even get used to responding to one another. While you could play at home during the pandemic, that’s not the same as communicating on a high creative and spiritual level with other people. We had to get back in the swing of things.

PG: As far as a spiritual level, there is also something outside the stage that enters into the equation in live performance. You could feel that element especially well the next time you performed in Newport, with Danilo Perez, John Patitucci, and Ravi Coltrane at the Wayne Shorter tribute in 2024. Although Wayne wasn’t there because he had passed away, there was something magical about that performance that made it feel like he was there.

TLC: I hear you. I felt his presence too. But I would say that Danilo, John, and I are so close to Wayne that we feel his presence somewhat regularly. And Ravi kind of captured the spirit that day as well. He’s one of the few people who can actually capture that spirit. It was a very special performance that felt like we were honoring somebody in a way they would appreciate. We were not just playing his tunes, but really trying to play them as if he were there. Play them in a way that he would be down with. Play them in a way almost as if he were the bandleader. It’s hard to even think of Wayne as not being here since I still feel his presence. It’s the same for me with Jack DeJohnette. He and Wayne were two of my biggest mentors.

PG: Since you mentioned Jack, do you have any favorite memories of him?

TLC: There are way too many to even talk about. I started going to visit him when I was eighteen. He lived up a big, tall mountain, and I remember driving up that hill in upstate New York. Oh God, Jack was such an influence on me musically. But on a solely personal level, he’s the one who told me to move to New York. He said “if you want to find out how good you are, put yourself in an environment where the competition is the greatest. You either sink or swim.”

Jack is also the one who opened me up when I was focused almost entirely on straight-ahead jazz. He and his wife, Lydia, started exposing me to other music. Other styles. Other genres. They took me to concerts. Gosh, she took me to a reggae concert. I forget who exactly. It may have been to see Burning Spear. We also went to a Sweet Honey in the Rock concert. I had never heard of them. Jack exposed me to fusion music, things like the Yellowjackets’ first couple of albums. He took me to a string quartet concert with Keith Jarrett, where he was featured. I was mostly into listening to bebop at the time and Jack said specifically, “Yeah, we have to open you up.” And it was great to be under his wing.

PG: As far as the spiritual element of music, do you see the creation of music as a form of prayer or spiritual practice? Both “Prayer Song” and “Solidarity Song” on Trip the Night Fantastic suggest a spiritual element.

TLC: Well, it is kind of a mystery. I don’t know. I actually started writing a book called ‘Jazz is a Spirit,’ where I interviewed people asking about this mysterious place where your practice of spirituality meets your practice of music. Just how ideas happen, creativity in general, is a spiritual process. I don’t think it’s purely intellectual. And when people write from that place, I think we can hear it. If someone isn’t coming from that place, what they are playing doesn’t normally touch me. I need to feel the humanity in someone else. And that has to be spiritual because I don’t think intellect and craft alone really allow you to do that and actually reach people in that way.

But you said “Prayer Song” and “Solidarity Song”?

PG: Yes.

TLC: That’s interesting that you included “Solidarity Song.” That’s kind of an outlier on the album and the one that is more like a satire spoof where the left and right of America come together.

PG: The ending where the voices unite suggests a power and a truth that most people in our country have more in common than we let on and how it is often those in power working their hardest to divide us. There is a shared humanity that comes out in the piece.

TLC: Right. Exactly. I’m glad that it came across. I was a little worried because I was not entirely sure people would get the message. I’m happy to hear you say that you’re seeing it and feeling it that way.

It’s funny because it makes sense in a way, what you’re saying too. There is a repetitive phrase. It’s an eight-bar loop. And rhythmic repetition itself is also very spiritual. If you look at Africa, rhythms were tied to the gods. All the spiritual rhythms were about that kind of repetition and the tribal nature of rhythm. That’s also how I look at some hip hop grooves and beats. When people make beats, you’re hearing the same thing you’re over and over, it kind of gets inside of you. That’s why I don’t have a problem playing a beat over and over again; I feel like I’m honoring a tradition and honoring the archetype of my instrument. I have the freedom to also do other things. But when I give lessons at Berklee, if a student can’t play a groove over and over for five minutes, that’s a problem. You’re saying that just hit me in that way because that song is an eight-bar loop. Of course, the drums change a little, but basically the guitar riffs, bass, and all that are an eight-bar pattern looped underneath.

PG: That also gets to one of the great things about Social Science. Some people try to divide messaging from groove as if a groove is somehow either inferior to the message or causes the message to get lost. Instead, you actually use the grooves to enrich the messages. It’s all united.

TLC: Yeah, I mean simplicity is also not an easy thing. It is especially difficult to make something clever and still deal with repetition. Repetition is not beneath us. I was reading an interview with Sonny Rollins recently, and it mentioned how some people have criticized him for having been one of the most creative musicians ever and then came down on how he presented music in his later years. To which he said, “Am I above playing a calypso?” I thought that was such a great response because artists morph and grow in different ways. Sometimes what may seem backwards or not expansive to somebody else is completely expansive.

I feel that Trip the Night Fantastic is one of my best albums. Actually, I feel it’s my best work yet. I’m not playing the same way I did on We Insist 2025! (Candid, 2025) or improvising on the instrument in the same way. I’m expanding differently. I’m expanding with my lyric writing, with production, and conceptually with my poetry. I stepped out to do my own spoken word piece on this album. That’s where I am at that moment.

I’m also working on the New Standards 2 album now, using the music from the new book we are making. I have a gig coming up at Smoke, and after that, we will go into the studio. The New Standards project is also totally different from what I do with Social Science. I just feel I should have the freedom to be able to represent all these sides of me and can’t allow other people to put me in a box due to their own taste or their own limited way of looking at music. I can’t try to please anyone else, and I have to make music that I like.

PG: Presumably, however, there is some overlap between your projects as, at the end of the day, they all represent you. What do you feel you have learned the most from working through all the incredible compositions in your New Standards projects, and how may that have shaped how you write for other projects like Social Science?

TLC: I think the biggest thing with New Standards is that there are so many female composers. There are so many female musicians. I am trying to limit the second New Standards book to only a hundred composers, but I already have more than a hundred on my list. I’ve reached out to about fifty and am now trying to whittle down the second half. It’s kind of a trip that I’m like, “Who do I not put in?” because there is so much talent and so many voices out there that could and should be heard.

One of the points of the book is to say that women are here. Women have always been here. Women have always composed. And we need to take women seriously as composers. What that means as far as a different sound to the music, I don’t know. I feel like whatever your artistic output is, that’s basically an extension of who you are. And, we each experience the world differently and we write from that experience. I haven’t analyzed it enough to know what compositionally that looks like. I don’t know what the difference is, but it’s more about creating space for people who are out here doing this and loving this art form. We are trying to provide opportunities for them to express themselves without extra burdens and extra barriers. It’s just an awareness thing because it’s so easy to simply call guys for your gigs and to play music written by a man if you aren’t playing your own original material. I think the New Standards project makes us all look at things a little more equitably.

PG: As far as your own writing, how do the pieces for Social Science come together? Do you start with the thematic concept of the composition, say, climate change, and build music around it? Or do you start with a rhythmic idea and the rest comes later?

TLC: Well, ultimately, it’s a different process for every song. But, in general, Trip the Night Fantastic is slightly different from Waiting Game because we – Matt, Aaron, Morgan, and I – collaborated differently. We started writing some of these songs together. “Autonomy Song,” “Pet Song,” and “Blues Song” were written by all four of us together. When we were writing the music, we weren’t thinking about the themes necessarily.

I ended up writing the lyrics to “Autonomy Song” and “Pet Song,” but I’m not entirely sure what happens when I write. I get inspiration and go with it.  I knew that I wanted to do something in relation to animals and animal activism, but I didn’t know how that was going to come out until “Pet Song” came together. It just comes to you, I guess. You hear the music, and inspiration comes. For “Autonomy Song,” I started with a sultry beat. Then I decided to spin this sexy groove to talk about the issue of bodily autonomy.

The other way we collaborate, which is also a little more reflective of how the first Social Science album was done, is that we bring in music that we’ve written with the band in mind. Even on this one, “Abolition Song” was  something we worked on during the pandemic. Morgan Guerin brought the music and I wrote the lyrics. But it was specifically commissioned by [the University of California, Santa Cruz] for an online symposium that they did on abolition. And I worked with ideas around it. 

“Identity Song” used to be called “Just Speech.” We recorded it as a band, and that version just wasn’t working for me. So I took out all the chords, all the instruments, and left basically the bass and what I played on the drums. Then I rewrote everything around that. So, it doesn’t really sound the same at all as “Just Speech” did.

“Climate Song” is something Aaron wrote, and he definitely did it with climate in mind. Then I asked Kokayi to do a rap with the theme.

For “Prayer Song,” Morgan brought in the music, and I asked him what he felt it was about. He looked at it as representing the slow run toward justice. And I thought that Moor Mother would be perfect for it. So, I asked her to get in on that one. For “Blues Song,” I thought of Aja Monet because she calls herself a surrealist blues poet. She was also influenced by June Jordan, who was somebody that I knew and wanted to work with. 

PG: You never did?

TLC: No. June once asked me to write with her, but it was ultimately one of those lost opportunities because she died before we could do something together. So, when “Blues Song” came together, I thought it would be great to take one of June’s poems and add it to the song. And then I thought about adding Aja.

PG: The album features many guest artists. It sounds like your decisions about who should be on a particular track are based mostly on what your ear hears as missing in the moment and not some formalized process.

TLC: Exactly. Sometimes, there is a particular person I know I want to work with beforehand. For instance, Ledisi had said to me, “Let’s write something for the new album,” before “Autonomy Song” started coming together. I knew I was going to try to collaborate with her. And we had recorded the track because that was one of the ones we co-wrote with the band. Then I thought it would be a good one for her to be on, and she and I collaborated on the lyrics together.

There’s something really special about Social Science and how we are able to collaborate with musicians that I really love to work with. It is part of what makes the project my favorite.  

PG: Do you have any thoughts on where Social Science goes from here?

TLC: No, everything’s day by day. I can’t spend too much time focused on the future. I try to be in the present. Right now, I just want to practice the drums and become a better drummer. I haven’t been able to put so much time into the drums in recent years. And that’s what’s on my mind. I’m hoping that my sound can evolve as a drummer. I’m hoping there’s a glimpse of that on the next New Standards recording. We’ll see.

‘Trip the Night Fantastic’ will be released on Candid Records on July 31, 2026. It can be pre-ordered on Bandcamp. On the very next day, August 1, 2026, think while you groove to Terri Lyne Carrington’s Social Science at the 2026 Newport Jazz Festival. You can read more about the Festival here. Stay tuned as we continue our extensive pre-coverage of the event. We will also be providing live coverage from Fort Adams. You can learn more about Terri Lyne Carrington on her website.

Photo credit: Meredith Truax