Jay Clayton

All Music Guide:

Jay Clayton is both a very significant singer in the jazz avant-garde and a highly influential educator. Clayton learned standards very early from hearing her mother sing around their house. She took private piano lessons from a young age and studied at the St. Louis Institute for Music for a short time. She graduated from Miami University in Oxford, OH in 1963 with a degree in Music Education. Although she studied classical music at school, Clayton sang jazz on the weekends at local clubs. After graduation she moved to New York. While at first she sang standards in clubs, she became one of the first jazz singers to start performing with freer and more avant-garde musicians, in addition to utilizing electronics and interacting with poets. An abbreviated list of her associates through the years includes saxophonists Mark Whitecage, Steve Lacy, Jane Ira Bloom, and Gary Bartz, clarinetist Perry Robinson, trombonist Julian Priester, pianists Muhal Richard Abrams, and George Cables, and the innovative a cappella group Vocal Summit, which teamed her with Jeanne Lee, Urszula Dudziak, Bobby McFerrin, and Norma Winstone.

As an educator, Clayton was inspired by Sheila Jordan and has become just as influential. She has taught at a countless number of seminars, workshops, and master classes, was on the jazz faculty of Cornish College of the Arts for 20 years, and has taught at Universitat fur Musik in Austria, the Bud Shank Jazz Workshop, City College, the New School in New York City, the Vermont Jazz Workshop and the Banff Center in Canada. As a singer, Clayton has been well documented through the years, recording for such labels as Anima, Hep, West Wind, ITM, Winter & Winter and Sound Winds. She has also recorded a duo set of standards with pianist Fred Hersch, Beautiful Love, for Sunnyside.

Wikipedia:

Jay Clayton (born October 28, 1941, in Youngstown, Ohio, as Judith Colantone) is an internationally acclaimed avant-garde vocalist and jazz educator.

Early years

After studying at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio she came to New York City taking lessons from musicians such as Steve Lacy. Together with her husband, percussionist Frank Clayton, she presented Jazz at the Loft in their home in about 1967: Sam Rivers, Cecil McBee, Joanne Brackeen, Dave Liebman, Pete Yellin, Hal Galper, Jeanne Lee, Bob Moses, Junie Booth, John Gilmore, and Jane Getz were among the featured musicians. Clayton also began to earn her own reputation as an avant-garde singer, developing her personal wordless vocabulary.

Musical career

Clayton's pioneering vocal explorations placed her at the forefront of the free jazz movement and loft scene in the 1970s, where she counted among the first singers to incorporate poetry and electronics into her improvisations. She performed and recorded with Muhal Richard Abrams, with John Fischer's Interface, and Byron Morris's Unity. For a long time she was a member of the Steve Reich ensemble, performing the compositions of the minimalist composer. She was one of the first singers to record composer John Cage’s vocal music.

Clayton's own performance dates appear under the heading the Jay Clayton Project, while she titles her work with other esteemed vocalists Different Voices. She co-leads a trio, Outskirts, with drummer Jerry Granelli and saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom.

With more than 40 recordings to her credit, Clayton has appeared alongside such formidable artists as Bud Shank, Charlie Haden, Kirk Nurock, Stanley Cowell, Lee Konitz, Julian Priester, George Cables, Gary Bartz, Gary Peacock and Fred Hersch, as well as fellow vocalists Jeanne Lee, Lauren Newton, Urszula Dudziak, and Bobby McFerrin. In 1971, Clayton began leading her own workshops, partly together with Michelle Berne and Jeanne Lee.

Teaching career

From 1981 onwards, Clayton taught at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington for 20 years. In addition to that tenure, Clayton taught for several semesters at New York's City College, at several European universities (Graz (Austria), Berlin, Cologne, Munich). She developed the vocal program for the Banff Center (Canada), which she co-taught with fellow vocalist Sheila Jordan. The two are also teaching together at Vermont Jazz Workshop and at Jazz in July (at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst). Clayton has brought her masterclasses to the Manhattan School of Music and the Peabody Conservatory. Her book, Sing Your Story: A Practical Guide for Learning and Teaching the Art of Jazz Singing, was published in 2001.

Other activities

In 1979, Clayton acted as the artistic director for the first ever Women in Jazz Festival (produced by Cobi Narita). She served as a consultant for ABC Cable's Women in Jazz, compiling footage for the series. Clayton received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and Chamber Music America.