Passage to Freedom by Jan Leder

When I started highschool, the music teacher asked all of us which instrument we wanted to play. I wrote down tenor saxophone and was disappointed when I found out I'd been delegated to the flute section of the stage band, jealously noticing that the saxophone section was filled with boys. In protest I proceeded to play all my flute parts in the wrong octave until my teacher got fed up and I dropped music for typing.

Maybe if I'd had flute playing role models like Jan Leder then I wouldn't have been so piqued. Jan Leder is a jazz flute player who isn't afraid to reveal the moody, expressive tonal range of the instrument. My favourite track on Passage to Freedom is an rendition of the classic standard "When Sunny Gets Blue", (a live performance judging from the occasional clapping), that is at once unhurried, focussed and evocative. Leder's a good leader, giving her group lots of room to do their thing as well.

So she plays flute in the best jazz tradition without any sentimentality, leads her own group, writes her own tunes which have also been recorded by other women in jazz (eg. Diane Hubka, on her album "Haven't We Met?"), what more could you want? Hey, she's also compiled and published "Women in Jazz: a discography of instrumentalists, 1913 - 1968", contributing to the record keeping of women's contribution to jazz. Can you dig it?

Her album is hard to find - however you can contact her directly regarding the book, and no doubt she'll soon have more recordings that will be only a click away.

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