Musician creates El Paso Jazz Girls to inspire next generation of players
EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14) — A professional musician and native El Pasoan noticed a lack of female jazz musicians. So she took action. She founded a free, week-long workshop for young female musicians hoping to inspire and improve. El Paso Jazz Girls is preparing for their concert finale and they are the focus of this week’s Built in the Borderland.
“The first year we had nine participants and this year we have 32,” said Amanda Ekery, the founder of El Paso Jazz Girls. “And the girls gave us ideas for this year. We want it to be bigger. We want to be longer we want to play a concert. So we made all that happen this year. We’re bigger, we’re longer, we’re week-long and we have a final concert where we can show off what we’ve been working on all week.”
Chantal Camus is a Coronado High School senior who plays upright bass, electric bass and sings.
“We break down into combos and we improvise and they teach us how to do the blues form or the chord changes and what notes that are in each chord,” said Camus. “Each instructor has a different perspective and learning from every single one of them it makes you absorb all of it and you make your own unique style or how to teach or how to learn.”
Ekery said: “I was born and raised here. I went to Coronado High School and then I moved to Dallas to do my undergraduate degree at UNT. Moved to Boston to get my masters from New England conservatory and now I live in New York playing and doing work as a musician.”
As to how she got the idea for the free, weeklong camp, Ekery said: “I got the idea last year after learning that only seven girls in the last decade have made Texas All State Jazz Band and I crunched the numbers and it was less than two percent of participants and I started thinking, ‘Well I see a lack of female representation in my own professional life so how can I change that from where it happens, like when people drop out of band or when they feel like they can’t do jazz band, which is in middle and high school.’ And because I’m from El Paso and I love coming home I thought this is the best place to do it. Why not come home and share what I’ve learned with girls who are in the same position that I was like 10-15 years ago.”
The jazz camp comes to an end with a free concert at Ardovino’s Desert Crossing.
The El Paso Jazz Girls Concert is happening Friday at 7:30 pm at Ardovino’s Desert Crossing in Sunland Park.
The groups will perform the music of Count Basie, The Beatles and original music written by participants.
