Menywod yn y byd Jazz

Menywod yn y byd Jazz - esblygiad menywod mewn jazz yng Nghymru.

 This celebration of women in jazz in Wales is the culmination of a project between The Borough Theatre and Black Mountain Jazz, funded by the Arts Council of Wales as part of the Archwilwyr Jazz Explorers project and features a range of musicians from those established on the jazz scene, to those just starting out.

Archwilwyr Jazz Explorers Project

As a result of the 2020 COVID lockdown, James Chadwick, jazz guitarist and educator based in Cardiff, who had set up a Facebook page called Jazz in South Wales, started asking jazz musicians to send films of themselves playing, which he then posted as daily performances, for 18 months. This stimulated connections and reconnections between musicians in the community and led to a discussion on the state of Jazz in South Wales before COVID and what it might look like afterwards. With the support of the RWCMD, an application to the Arts Council of Wales to run a Connect and Flourish, R and D project for a year. This resulted in Archwilwyr Jazz Explorers, a year-long project running pan- Wales, focusing on- community, education and diversity, with the aim of developing links, partnerships and work opportunities for Wales based jazz musicians. The project began in July, with a partnership with Aberystwyth Music Festival who piloted a fringe jazz line up to their Classical programme. In September, an education project was launched in North Wales, working with three music services, Galeri in Caernarfon and a group of recent RWCMD graduates, exploring jazz concepts, improvisation and performance. The final element is the Women in Jazz project, delivered through a partnership between Black Mountain Jazz and the newly refurbished Borough Theatre in Abergavenny.