Musicwoman Live!

Karen Borca is one of the rst musicians to have pioneered the bassoon as a front-line, improvising instrument in Avant-Garde and Free Jazz Borca studied music with John Barrows and Arthur Weisberg at the University of Wisconsin, graduating in 1971. In her last year there she met and studied with Cecil Taylor. She played in his big bands, ensembles, and his Unit, and was subsequently his assistant while he worked in the Black Music Program at Antioch College. Borca was an assistant to Taylor's longtime collaborator, saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, while he was artist-in-residence at Bennington College in 1975. She married Lyons and played with his ensemble until he died in 1986. Karen has led groups in the U.S and Europe, including The Berlin Jazz Festival, The Vision Festival, Tampere Jazz Happening, Switzerland's Taktlos Festival, Catalytic Sound Festival, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, and the Newport Festival Salute to Women in Jazz. Borca was Artist-in-Residence at the Jyderup Accordeon Træf in Denmark in October, 2016. Along the way she has led or starred in projects celebrating the legacies of Taylor and Lyons, and continued to be a preferred participant in ensembles of Bill Dixon, William Parker, Paul Murphy, Andre Martinez, Marco Eneidi, Steve Swell, Sonny Simmons, and others. 2024 saw the release of the rst recordings as leader: Good News Blues by the Karen Borca Trio, Quartet & Quintet Live at the Vision Festival 1998 and 2005 (No Business Records); and Entwined, a duo with Paul Murphy (Relative Pitch Records). https://www.karenborca.com/ http://wijsf.org