Photo By Steve Moore
Jazz and blues singer and composer Joan Cartwright has been trumpeting the accomplishments of women musicians since 2007, when she founded the nonprofit Women in Jazz South Florida Inc. Cartwright performed at numerous venues in the area and around the world before the demands of traveling and going on stage forced her to give up live gigs in 2014.
Cartwright, 75, is now focused on building the Musicwoman Archive and Cultural Center, an ambitious project that will house her collection of jazz art, books and CDs, as well as a recording studio, theater, workshop rooms, accommodations for educators, performers, guests and interns. The facility will be on nine acres in Clarendon, North Carolina, where Cartwright plans to make her home after living in South Florida off and on since the early 1980s. She is pursuing public and private funding sources for the project, which she says will cost over $300 million.
“I can’t wait. I’ve been waiting for a long time. It’s been only two years that we’ve been working on the property. We will still maintain our connections in South Florida,” says Cartwright, noting that about 169 of Women in Jazz South Florida’s 415 members are in the Sunshine State. The organization has members in 26 states and 17 countries.
Cartwright, who runs WIJSF as executive director with the help of a five-member board, started the organization as a promotional, networking and educational organization. “We’re not a booking agent,” she clarifies. Rather, WIJSF gives bass players, saxophonists, pianists, violinists, vocalists, composers and other musical artists from around the globe exposure and opportunities to connect and collaborate. For example, she invites women to submit their music for CD compilations. She has put together eight CDs by women from a range of musical genres. “I even have a Celtic harp player on one of the CDs,” she says.
She also hopes to make a documentary highlighting women jazz artists, who she says have been underpaid and underrepresented in the music business. “There are women with immense background and achievement, but nobody knows anything about them, so the purpose is to bring them into the light and put out a documentary that will be on PBS or Netflix or wherever.”
For information, call 954-740-3398 or visit wijsf.org.