Terri Lyne Carrington: Pittsburgh International Jazz Festival 2026

Terri Lyne Carrington is a NEA Jazz Master, Doris Duke Artist, and four-time Grammy award-winning drummer, composer, producer, and educator. She serves as founder and artistic director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, as well artistic director for both the Next Jazz Legacy program (a collaboration with New Music USA). She has performed on more than 100 recordings, and has toured and recorded with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Stan Getz, Esperanza Spalding, and many others. Carrington holds honorary doctorates from York University, Manhattan School of Music and Berklee College of Music. The renowned 2019 release Waiting Game from Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science earned the Edison Award for music and a Grammy nomination. Last year, she released critically acclaimed album We Insist 2025!, a poignant re-imagining of Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite, which notably featured Abbey Lincoln. The highly celebrated album reflects upon the past, while challenging the present. It both honors Roach’s original masterpiece and furthers Carrington’s passion for using jazz as a tool for social activism. GRAMMY® award-winning drummer, composer and bandleader Terri Lyne Carrington was born in 1965 in Medford, Massachusetts. After an extensive touring career of over 20 years with luminaries like Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, David Sanborn, Joe Sample, Cassandra Wilson, Clark Terry, Dianne Reeves and more, she returned to her hometown where she was appointed professor at her alma mater, Berklee College of Music. Terri Lyne also received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 2003. After studying under full scholarship at Berklee, with the encouragement of her mentor, Jack DeJohnette, Carrington moved to New York in 1983. For 5 years she was a much in-demand musician, working with James Moody, Lester Bowie, Pharoah Sanders, and others. In the late ‘80s she relocated to Los Angeles, where she gained recognition on late night