Carrington's Grammy-nominated CD spotlights women

NEW YORK — Drummer Terri Lyne Carrington couldn't have imagined producing an all-female jazz album like her Grammy-nominated "The Mosaic Project" when she launched her career three decades ago. Back then, she got used to being the only woman on the bandstand.

"The pool of female jazz musicians was not the same before," said Carrington. "But now there's like a surge of younger players ... and that made me feel like I can actually do a project like this."

Over the years, Carrington has helped mentor a new generation of female instrumentalists who have gone beyond the roles of singers and pianists that women traditionally filled in a male-dominated jazz world.

The inspiration for "Mosaic Project" came at the 2007 Red Sea Jazz Festival in Israel when Carrington performed in a quartet with Dutch saxophonist Tineke Postma, pianist Geri Allen, and bassist Esperanza Spalding.

"I looked up on the stage and there were four women, and it just felt very organic and natural, and I thought maybe I would use it as a nucleus for a group for a recording project," she said.

The 46-year-old Carrington says that having the CD with 21 female performers receive a Grammy nomination for best jazz vocal album is "just icing on the cake for a project that I did deep from my heart."

"I think people could feel its honesty," said Carrington, speaking by telephone from her home in Medford, Mass. "I wasn't trying to go for any kind of gimmick effect. It was a sincere attempt to just celebrate the really great women in jazz — people that I've been close to over the years."

The album carries its own Grammy pedigree. The featured vocalists include Dianne Reeves, Cassandra Wilson and Dee Dee Bridgewater, who between them have won more than half of the Grammys awarded in the jazz vocal category over the past 15 years. There's also Spalding, the upset winner over Justin Bieber for best new artist at last year's Grammys, who plays bass on all 14 tracks and sings on two of them, including her own whimsical "Colors."

Carrington says she felt a strong connection with Spalding the first time they played together after meeting six years ago as faculty members at Boston's Berklee College of Music. The drummer performed on Spalding's CD "Chamber Music Society" and the soon-to-be-released "Radio Music Society." They also recently formed a collective trio with Allen that plays open-ended arrangements of jazz standards.