The Schomburg Center’s annual Women’s Jazz Festival (WJF) is celebrating 33 years of centering Black women in the field of jazz. The Women’s Jazz Festival was founded in 1992 by then Harlem resident and jazz vocalist, Melba Joyce. Year after year, the festival and its curators have brought together musicians, dancers and a melding of musical genres to deliver an exciting series of concerts featuring some of the best-known and emerging talent by women in jazz today. The 2025 festival will be held in person on March 10,17, and 24.

Join us for opening night of the Women’s Jazz Festival with the return of Somi!

Somi Kakoma — the vocalist, composer, writer, and performer known in the jazz world simply as ‘Somi’ — was born in Illinois to parents who emigrated from Rwanda and Uganda. Hailed by The New York Times as “a performer in full command of her instrument and powers”, she discovered her musical identity traversing the cultural bridge between Africa and America. That sense of discovery continues to guide a career in which she has has crafted “an elegant amalgam of the musics she loves and the bi-continental experiences that have shaped her life.”(NPR)

Women’s Jazz Festival 2025 Schedule

March 10: Somi

March 17: Sarah Elizabeth Charles Liberating the Bird featuring Juliette M. Jones & Monique Brooks Roberts

March 24: Carnegie Hall Citywide: Camille Thurman, saxophonist and vocalist