YSC Session: Reflective Imagining

How can reflecting on our experiences with gender equity help us build for the future?

Please join vocalist, songwriter, performing/recording artist and educator Sarah Elizabeth Charles for a conversation centered around gender equity and inclusion; grounded in personal experience, learning, and imagining.

Sarah Elizabeth Charles is a vocalist/composer based in Brooklyn, NY. She has worked and studied with artists such as Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, George Cables, Geri Allen and Sheila Jordan and has released four critically acclaimed albums with her band SCOPE between 2012 and today. As the active vocalist in a number of bands, Charles has performed at many venues throughout her career, including The White House, Carnegie Hall, the first annual Culture Summit in Abu Dhabi, The Kennedy Center, the Rose Theatre with Jazz at Lincoln Center and many more. She has also had a commissioned composition performed at The National Gallery in Washington D.C. via The Canales Project "Hear Her Song" initiative. In addition to her performances, Charles is an active educator as well. She works as a lead teaching artist with Carnegie Hall’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility Musical Connections workshop, has a private lessons studio in New York City, is an adjunct professor at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, co-teaching a course she designed called "Jazz and Gender” (with Caroline Davis) and has developed an early childhood music education program with Rise2Shine, a non-profit organization based in Fond Parisien, Haiti. In 2019, she was one of five recipients of the Yale School of Music's Distinguished Teaching Artist Award. In 2020, she was selected to be one of five members of the Joe's Pub Working Group, as a recipient of the New York City Women's Fund grant in support of her band's fourth album to be released in 2021 and as a recipient of Chamber Music America's New Jazz Works grant.