Lara Downes | June 30, 2025 The day before filming this conversation, I performed the Piano Concerto by pioneering African-American composer Florence Price with the Philadelphia Orchestra in its concert hall recently renamed after the legendary contralto Marian Anderson. I think of these two iconic women as my musical fairy godmothers; their barrier-breaking legacies have been essential to my own artistic life. So the power of female lineage was very much on my mind when I sat down with the brilliant jazz harpist Brandee Younger to talk about her musical journey, and the women who have inspired it.
The history of jazz harp begins in the 1920s, when Carlena Diamond toured the vaudeville circuit. Its practitioners make up a short list, but among them, two figures, both Black women, stand out as innovators who pushed the instrument to new limits. In the 1950s, Dorothy Ashby proved that the harp could bebop with the best of the best. And in the ‘70s, Alice Coltrane developed a radical new musical language with roots in both African-American and Eastern traditions as an expression of spirituality and self-healing.
Ashby and Coltrane were foundational influences for Brandee — voices calling her to follow their example of unconventional, deeply personal music-making that challenges the status quo. She has succeeded. So much so that she was awarded the lucrative 2025 Doris Duke Artist Award in recognition of her work “revolutionizing the harp’s role in modern music.” Her latest album, Gadabout Season, explores what her producer Rashaan Carter describes as an “Afrofuturist sonic palette,” showcasing her evolving use of electronic textures and extended techniques. While her ancestors have helped shape her own distinctive voice, Brandee has come full circle to celebrate her origins by recording the album on Alice Coltrane’s newly-restored harp.
Sitting together in the Blue Note Jazz Club, surrounded by the ghosts of countless musical ancestors, Brandee and I gave thanks to the women who came before us, reflecting on our experience of standing on their shoulders, feeling their strength, and finding the courage to take off and soar.
