“It’s All About the Ladies” is a tribute to “The Hidden Ladies of Jazz”; hidden, forgotten female instrumentalists, composers, composers and lyricists in jazz, who may not have quite received the limelight they deserved in their lifetime. For example, Mary Lou Williams, Kay Swift, Nancy Hamilton, Dorothy Fields, Marian McPartland, Peggy Lee, Ann Ronell and others. Many of them important stylists in jazz and who in turn paved the way for others and were mentors for several of the jazz icons we consider jazz role models today; Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coltrane and others.
Now the successful band is once again relevant with their first full-length album “The Hidden Ladies of Jazz” – an album which, since its release in October 2023, has already sold over 500 copies. The album contains 12 tracks which have been written by female composers, lyricists and instrumentalists. Anna Pauline is responsible for several of the arrangements. After tours in both Denmark and Sweden in the fall of 2023, the band is ready to continue the launch of the new album in the spring of 2024.
The project began in 2014 when the jazz singer, composer and lyricist Anna Pauline, as a band leader, was tasked with putting together a band consisting only of female musicians for a concert during International Women’s Day that same year. The concert, which was a success, led to the current “Sisters of Jazz”; a band of established, professional female musicians from both Denmark and Sweden. The idea for the program “It’s All About the Ladies” came to Anna Pauline during a stay in London when she visited the Tate Gallery, which then showed paintings and portraits of unknown, female artists, contemporaries with big names such as Gauguin, Monet and Van Gogh. Since the start in 2014, the band has been seen on tours in Sweden, Denmark and Germany. Sisters of Jazz has received high praise and great reviews, not least in Sydsvenskan and in Orkesterjournalen. This project has also resulted in an EP with 4 songs plus a 5th bonus track which was officially released at Palladium in Malmö in autumn 2017.
Anna Pauline Andersson – vocals
Pernille Bévort – tenor saxophone
Lis Wessberg, trombone
Catrine U. Frølund – piano
Helle Marstrand – bass
Benita Haastrup – drums
