"Ms. Baum brings a remarkable balance of fluidity and restless creativity to her work as a post-bop flutist and composer.” - Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times
Photograph by Vincent Soyez
NYC flutist/composer/recording artist/clinician, Jamie Baum, has toured the US, and over 30 countries performing at major festivals and concert halls including The North Sea Jazz Festival, Guimaraes Jazz Festival, Madrid Jazz Festival, “jaZZ & beyond Improvised Music Festival”; Sedutirol, Braga, Oeiras, Bermuda, Edinburgh, Friehoffer, Winter JazzFest and JVC Festivals. She has performed with artists as renown and diverse as George Russell, Randy Brecker, Donald Brown, Mick Goodrick, Tom Harrell and Kenny Barron to Dave Douglas, Fred Hersch, Uri Caine, Ralph Alessi, Leni Stern, Jane Bunnett, David Binney, V.M Bhatt, Anthony Braxton and Wadada Leo Smith.
Though focusing primarily on jazz, she has been involved in several projects, performances and tours performing classical, new music, Brazilian and Latin music. Receiving critical praise for five CD’s as a leader with her sixth, Bridges due out in 2017, Sight Unheard (w/Dave Douglas, Kenny Werner), Moving Forward, Standing Still (w/Ralph Alessi, George Colligan) and her 2013 Sunnyside Records release In This Life (w/Amir ElSaffar, John Escreet) all received four stars from DownBeat and made several “Best CDs of the Year” lists. Inch By Inch, by the cooperative band Yard Byard: The Jaki Byard Project (w/Jerome Harris, George Schuller), out May 2014 (GM Recordings) also received four stars from DownBeat. Recordings as sidewoman include those by Dave Binney, George Colligan, Ursel Schlicht, Glenn White, Frank Carlberg, Patrizia Scascitelli, Taylor Haskins, Steve Lampert, Monika Herzig, Louise Rogers, Sarah McKenzie, Brian Landrus, etc.
Ms. Baum has been in the DownBeat Critics Polls annually since 1998, winning #3 in the 2016 Top Flutists category and # 1 Rising Star Flutist in 2012, and was named a “Major New International Talent” in 2015 lists by both “Musica Jazz” and “Jazzit” (Italy). She was included in the Huffington Post’s “Twenty five Great Jazz Flute Performances” and has appeared in both the JazzTimes (’14) and NPR Critics Polls (’13). She was nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association for “Flutist of the Year“ eight times, including 2015 and her band The Jamie Baum Septet+ was also nominated in 2014 as “Best Midsize Ensemble of the Year” – in the same list with only two other bands -The Wayne Shorter Quartet and Steve Coleman and Five Elements!
Among the many awards for her composing, Baum was awarded the 2014 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and was selected a 2014-15 Norman Stevens Fellow during herMacDowell Colony residency. She won the ’99 International Jazz Composers Alliance Award, the 2010 CAP Award (American Music Center), the prestigious 2003 New Works: Creation and Presentation Award and the 2007 Encore Award, both components of the Doris Duke/Chamber Music America Jazz Ensembles Project.
Media attention for In This Life brought features on WBGO’s RADAR and NPR’s All Things Considered, reviews in The New York Times, DownBeat, JazzTimes, All About Jazz, etc., making the “Best CDs of 2013” on lists including The Boston Globe, ITunes, Rhapsody.com, EMusic,com and Francis Davis’ NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll. Ms. Baum was also featured in a two-page article in the September 2014 JazzTimes issue.
Through a highly competitive auditioning process, Jamie was chosen to tour for the DOS/Kennedy Center Jazz Ambassador program from ’99-’03 as well as several later tours sponsored by the US State Department in South America, Europe and South Asia.
Aside from leading both her Septet+ (since ’99) and Short Stories (since 2015) and co-leading Yard Byard: The Jaki Byard Project, she is involved in several other projects either as co-leader or side-woman, including The Richie Beirach/Jamie Baum Duo and Far Cry Flutesfeaturing Robert Dick. Ms. Baum has been on the faculty of the jazz department at Manhattan School of Music since 2007, on the adjunct faculty roster at the New School University since 2004 and taught at Berklee College of Music (2011-2013). A clinician for Altus Flutes/KHS America, they have sponsored her innovative, pioneering clinic “A Fear Free Approach to Improvisation for the Classically-Trained Musician”™ at colleges, conservatories, festivals, flute clubs and “music and art” schools worldwide since 1993.
- Top Flute Category in the Downbeat Critics Poll 2012 through 2016
- No. 1 Rising Star in the Flute Category in the 2012 Downbeat Critics Poll
- 1998 through 2011 Rising Star (Top Ten) DownBeat Critics Poll
- Nominated “Flutist of the Year” Jazz Journalists Assoc., ’05, ’06, ’09, ’10, ’12, ’13, ’14, ’15
