TLC & Friends (Remastered) Terri Lyne Carrington, George Coleman, Kenny Barron, Buster Williams, Sonny Carrington

• 1 What is This Thing Called Love (Remastered) 06:22
• 2 La Bonita (Remastered) 05:32
• 3 Seven Steps to Heaven (Remastered) 05:50
• 4 St. Thomas (Remastered) 07:17
• 5 Just the Way You Are (Remastered) 06:59
• 6 Sonnymoon For Two (Remastered) 05:37
• Total Runtime 37:37

Info for TLC & Friends (Remastered)

NEA Jazz Master, composer, activist, and educator Terri Lyne Carrington unveils a remarkable musical treasure to the world. TLC & Friends, Carrington's debut album recorded in October 1981 when she was just 16 years old, finally gets a wide release via Candid Records today, June 16, providing a rare glimpse into the early talents of this extraordinary multi-faceted artist.

Though it is Carrington’s very first session, TLC & Friends features an epic and enviable lineup of collaborators, including Kenny Barron on piano, George Coleman on saxophone, and Buster Williams on bass. Her father Sonny Carrington also contributes saxophone to the Sonny Rollins classic “Sonnymoon for Two.” The album masterfully showcases Carrington's artistry as a drummer and composer, highlighted by the standout original track "La Bonita," a refreshing interpretation of Billy Joel's beloved composition, "Just The Way You Are,” alongside scorching renditions of standards like "Seven Steps To Heaven," and “What Is This Thing Called Love.”

“It's been over 40 years since this album was recorded,” Carrington writes in a new reflection included with TLC & Friends. “My Dad has been nudging me for quite some time to release this because (in his words) I have not done a legitimate ‘blowing session’ album since then. Generally, it's difficult for me to listen to myself from the past, but after all this time, I can smile. It's hard not to due to the amazing musicians that so graciously recorded with me in the fall of 1981, a few months after my 16th birthday.”

TLC & Friends captures Carrington at the outset of an auspicious recording career, but by age 16, she was nearly a veteran. Hailing from a family of musicians - in addition to her father, Carrington’s grandfather and fellow drummer Matt Carrington, performed with Chu Berry and Fats Waller - Carrington first shared the stage with Rahsaan Roland Kirk at age five. By ten she became the youngest musician in Boston ever to receive a union card, and was impressing audiences with Clark Terry and his All-Stars. At age eleven, Carrington was awarded a full scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston, when the school’s founders Lawrence and Alma Berk, heard her sit in with the great Oscar Peterson at the suggestion of Ella Fitzgerald (today Carrington teaches at the school and is the founder of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice). Carrington would go on to perform with dozens of other legends including B.B. King, Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Nat Adderley, Jon Hendricks, and many more before she was old enough to drive, and drum masters Art Blakey, Roy Haynes, Max Roach, Buddy Rich and Elvin Jones invited her to sit in with their bands.

Earlier this year Terri Lyne Carrington won the GRAMMY for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, with another Candid Records release new STANDARDS Vol. 1, a groundbreaking project, created to further acknowledge and shed light on women composers in jazz. new STANDARDS Vol. 1 has been celebrated by The New York Times, NPR, Billboard, The Guardian, Stereogum, a Jazziz cover story, Boston Globe and more for its groundbreaking mission and ambition.

Terri Lyne Carrington, drums
George Coleman, tenor saxophone
Kenny Barron, piano
Buster Williams, double bass

Recorded October 19,1981 at Jimmy Madison's Studio, N.Y.
Engineered and mixed by Jimmy Madison

Digitally remastered

Terri Lyne Carrinton
Celebrating 40 years in music, NEA Jazz Master and three-time GRAMMY® award-winning drummer, producer, and educator, Terri Lyne Carrington started her professional career in Massachusetts at 10 years old when she became the youngest person to receive a union card in Boston. She was featured as a “kid wonder” in many publications and on local and national TV shows. After studying under a full scholarship at Berklee College of Music, Carrington worked as an in-demand musician in New York City, and later moved to Los Angeles, where she gained recognition on late night TV as the house drummer for both the Arsenio Hall Show and Quincy Jones’ VIBE TV show, hosted by Sinbad.

While still in her 20’s, Ms. Carrington toured extensively with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, among others and in 1989 released a GRAMMY®-nominated debut CD on Verve Forecast, Real Life Story. In 2011 she released the GRAMMY®Award-winning album, The Mosaic Project, featuring a cast of all-star women instrumentalists and vocalists, and in 2013 she released, Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue, which also earned a GRAMMY®Award, establishing her as the first woman ever to win in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category.

To date Ms. Carrington has performed on over 100 recordings and has been a role model and advocate for young women and men internationally through her teaching and touring careers. She has toured or recorded with luminary artists such as Al Jarreau, Stan Getz, Woody Shaw, Clark Terry, Diana Krall, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, James Moody, Yellowjackets, Esperanza Spalding, and many more. Ms. Carrington’s 2015 release, The Mosaic Project: LOVE and SOUL, featured performances of iconic vocalists Chaka Khan, Natalie Cole, and Nancy Wilson.

In 2003, Ms. Carrington received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music and was appointed professor at the college in 2005, where she currently serves as the Founder and Artistic Director of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, which recruits, teaches, mentors, and advocates for musicians seeking to study jazz with racial justice and gender justice as a guiding principles. She also serves as Artistic Director for The Carr Center, Detroit, MI. and for Berklee’s Summer Jazz Workshop.

In 2019 Ms. Carrington was granted The Doris Duke Artist Award, a prestigious acknowledgment in recognition of her past and ongoing contributions to jazz music. Her current collaborative project, Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science (formed with Aaron Parks and Matthew Stevens), released their debut album, Waiting Game, in November, 2019 on Motema Music, inspired by the seismic changes in the ever-evolving social and political landscape. The double album expresses an unflinching, inclusive, and compassionate view of humanity’s breaks and bonds through an eclectic program melding jazz, R&B, indie rock, contemporary improvisation, and hip-hop.

Both Waiting Game and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice point to Carrington’s drive to combine her musical talents with her passion for social justice. The subjects addressed on Waiting Game run the gamut of social concerns: mass incarceration, police brutality, homophobia, Native American injustice, political imprisonment, and gender justice.

“In previous projects I’ve hinted at my concerns for the society and the community that I live in,” Carrington says. “But everything has been pointing in this direction. At some point you have to figure out your purpose in life. There are a lot of drummers deemed ‘great.’ For me, that’s not as important as the legacy you leave behind.”

Waiting Game was nominated for a 2021 GRAMMY® award and has been celebrated as one of the best jazz releases of 2019 by Rolling Stone, Downbeat, Boston Globe and Popmatters. Downbeat describes the album as, “a two-disc masterstroke on par with Kendrick Lamar's 2015 hip-hop classic, 'To Pimp a Butterfly'..." Ms. Carrington was named as JazzTimes Critics Polls’ Artist of the Year, Jazz Artist of the Year by Boston Globe, and Jazz Musician of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association.

This album contains no booklet.