Caroline Davis: Liberative Joy

Alive with nurturing visions of simple sonic offerings to morph our present situation, Caroline Davis’ main reason for playing music is to connect with others, beckoning new vistas among curious listeners. Her musical journey began in Singapore, in a humid climate, hearing sounds underwater that she would recreate by singing to her German shepherd dogs, who treated her as their own. Her family moved to the United States, Atlanta, Georgia, around age 6, where she encountered R&B and gospel music rife with horns that called her to choose the saxophone 6 years later.  

 

Today, Caroline’s music covers a wide range of styles, owed to this shifting environment. As a leader, she has released seven albums: Live Work & Play (2012), Doors: Chicago Storylines (2015), Heart Tonic (2018), Alula (2019), Anthems (2019), Portals: Mourning (2021), and Alula: Captivity (2023). Her active projects include jazz-leaning Portals, experimental R&B outfit My Tree, and protest band Alula. She has won Downbeat’s Critic’s Poll Rising Star Alto-Saxophonist (2018) and has been included in numerous Reader and Critics Polls. Her work has garnered much praise from NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Wire, DownBeat, and many international publications.

 

Davis is active as both a side-person and a leader in a diverse set of expressions. Davis has shared the stage with Lee Konitz, Rajna Swaminathan, Michelle Boulé, Angelica Sanchez, John Zorn, Bari Kim, The Femme Jam, Matt Mitchell, Terry Riley, Miles Okazaki, and Billy Kaye.

 

Outside of these performance relationships, she has been involved with the following mentorship communities: IAJE’s Sisters in Jazz, the Kennedy Center’s Betty Carter Jazz Ahead Program, and Mutual Mentorship for Musicians. Grants and residencies supporting a grateful Caroline include: Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Chamber Music America, New York Foundation for the Arts, Jerome Hill, Civitella, BringAbout Residency, The Jazz Gallery, and MacDowell. Some of her compositional practice integrates music with cognitive science, influenced by her Ph.D in Music Cognition.  

 

Caroline’s awards and recognitions are plentiful. She has been involved with 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). Some of her compositional practice integrates music with cognitive science influenced by her Ph.D in Music Cognition. As a teaching artist, Caroline brings her unique knowledge of music and psychology to her teaching. She offers a yearly Jazz & Gender course at The New School, co-taught with Sarah Elizabeth Charles, and private lessons at Manhattan School of Music, and has been invited to institutions of all levels as a guest educator.

 

Caroline is an advocate for social justice in the realms of gender (This Is a Movement) and in the movement for carceral justice (Justice for Keith Lamar). She is organizing community events as “Community Conversations on Art & Justice for Incarcerated People”, showcasing the intersectionality between liberation and art of all forms.