Jamie Baum

New York City flutist, composer, recording artist, and clinician Jamie Baum has toured the U.S. and over twenty-eight countries, performing at major festivals and concert halls. She has performed with artists as renowned and diverse as George Russell, Randy Brecker, Donald Brown, Mick Goodrick, and Tom Harrell, to Dave Douglas, Fred Hersch, Uri Caine, V.M Bhatt, and Wadada Leo Smith. Though focusing primarily on jazz, she has been involved in several projects, performances, and tours performing classical, new music, and Brazilian and Latin music.

Receiving critical praise for five CDs as a leader featuring original compositions, her most recent Sunnyside Records release, In This Life, brought features on WBGO’s RADAR and NPR’s All Things Considered, reviews in the New York Times, DownBeat, JazzTimes, among others, and earned inclusion on the “Best CDs of 2013” lists of the Boston Globe, ITunes, Rhapsody.com, and EMusic.com, and Francis Davis’ NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll.

Ms. Baum has been nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association for Flutist of the Year several times, including in 2014, and The Jamie Baum Septet+ was nominated for Mid-Size Ensemble of the Year in 2014 (along with only two other ensembles: Wayne Shorter’s and Steve Coleman’s). She has been in the DownBeat Critics Polls annually since 1998, winning “#1 Rising Star” in 2012. Among her awards for composing are the ’99 International Jazz Composers Alliance Award, the 2010 CAP Award (American Music Center), the 2003 New Works: Creation and Presentation Award, and the 2007 Encore Award, both components of the Doris Duke/Chamber Music America Jazz Ensembles Project.

Through a highly competitive auditioning process, Ms. Baum was chosen to tour for the DOS/ Kennedy Center Jazz Ambassador program from 1999 to 2003 and later toured in South America, Europe, and South Asia sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

Aside from her septet, together since 1999, she’s involved in several projects, including Yard Byard: The Jaki Byard Project and the Richie Beirach Duo. Jamie has been on the faculty of the jazz department at Manhattan School of Music since 2007, taught at Berklee College of Music (2011–2013) and has been on the adjunct jazz faculty roster of  New School University since 2004 teaching both flute and composition. She is a clinician for Altus Flutes, which has sponsored her innovative and ground-breaking clinic, “A Fear Free Approach to Improvisation for the Classically Trained Musician,&quot™ taught worldwide since 1993.

Long an experimenter in new chamber jazz textures and milieus, Baum’s direction with her recent CD In This Life expresses inspiration from the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and travels in South Asia. In 2002, while on a six-week State Department tour of South Asia as a Jazz Ambassador, Baum had several opportunities to perform and collaborate with top Indian icons and local musicians. It was on this tour that she performed with V.M. Bhatt,  Sandeep Das, and mridangam guru Karaikudi Mani, teacher to Jamey Haddad (percussionist with Paul Simon), among others. “It was an extraordinary experience working and performing with Mani and his eight-piece ensemble. He’d composed a piece for our performance, and having the chance to spend time rehearsing and discussing the music was transformative.”

She would later return to perform in Bangladesh later in 2002 and India and Nepal in 2003 and 2009, respectively, absorbing the distinctive character of these lands as well as immersing herself in the music of their artists. But as Baum explains, her goal is not to adopt these interesting styles and techniques:  “With great respect for their traditions and vast language, and without immersing myself in deep study, my goal has not been to play or compose in those styles, but to have my travels and playing experiences inspire new ways of writing and improvising.”

Sunnyside Records/In This Life