BKCM is happy to announce the winners of our third annual Jazz Leaders Fellowship (JLF) program, Miss Olithea and Melanie Charles.
The Fellowship
2023-2024 Fellows | 2022-2023 Fellows | 2021-2022 Fellows
JLF Committee
The Jazz Leaders Fellowship
Now in its third year, the Jazz Leaders Fellowship provides Black women and Black non-binary jazz musicians with resources to further develop their craft and pursue projects that advance their careers.
The Mission of the Jazz Leaders Fellowship is to
- support emerging jazz musicians in creating original music.
- support the careers of Black women and Black non-binary jazz musicians to help increase their representation in the field
- broaden the presence of BKCM in the jazz community
- expose BKCM’s students to diverse emerging teachers
Click here to learn more about the 2023-2024 fellowship package.
The program was conceived by BKCM Board member Daniel DiPietro and developed by the Jazz Leaders Fellowship Committee, led by musician and educator Fay Victor (learn more about the committee below).
The fellowship is made possible by the generous support of DiPietro and his wife Alexis and includes a $12,500 award. Additionally, BKCM will empower and aid recipients in their paths toward music leadership through teaching and performance opportunities, access to BKCM’s rehearsal spaces, participation in BKCM’s Jazz Program advisory panel and more.
Scroll down to learn more about our inaugural fellows Charenée Wade and Jordyn Davis, our 2022-23 fellows Jasmine Wilson and Melvis Santa, and our 2023-24 fellows Miss Olithea and Melanie Charles.
2023-2024 Jazz Leaders Fellows
Miss Olithea is a singer, songwriter, producer, and sound healing practitioner. She is a native New Yorker who by the age of 18 has performed at every major concert hall in NYC. She received her BFA from the Hartt School in musical theater. Some of her favorite credits include Millie Christine McKoy’s Syncopated Sonnets at the Lannan Foundation, The Afrofuturism Festival at Carnegie Hall, JAM Performance MoMA residency, Maroon and Suffragettes: a Tribute to Greg Tate. Olithea is a proud member of the World renowned Burnt Sugar Arkestra Chamber.
Olithea has also released her music Long Day’s Journey (2016) and To Be Seen and Heard (2017) Since those releases, Olithea has deepened her practice in meditation and experimental music. With the use of vocal loops, fx, and sound bowls she channels spirit that calms the heart and eases the mind. In 2022 She released Cosmic Church (2022), a live meditation EP. Miss Olithea also is a voice teacher and in November 2020 she started her own private studio The Vocal Journey. Olithea finds true delight in training singers in evidence-based techniques for a lifetime of healthy singing.
Brooklyn born and raised Melanie Charles is one of the few artists whose sound can capture the sentiments of a generation. Over the past few decades, she has made a name for herself through dynamic engagements with jazz, soul, and R&B. Her bold genre-bending style has been embraced by a range of artists including Wynton Marsalis, SZA, Mach-Hommy, Gorillaz, and The Roots. In 2021, she appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk and stunned with her eclectic style. Through it all, she has remained committed to making music that pushes listeners to consider new possibilities—both sonically and politically.
“Make Jazz Trill Again,” a project that she launched in 2016, demonstrates her allegiance to everyday people, especially the youth and is focused on taking jazz from the museum to the streets. “I love jazz, I really fell in love with it deeply. But I was interested in young people interacting with it,” Charles says. The album Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women is reflective of Charles’ tremendous versatility and imagination as an artist but of also her deep care for community.
2022-2023 Jazz Leaders Fellows
Melvis Santa is a multi-disciplinary singer, creative pianist, composer, actress, educator, and cultural ambassador who has spent the last two decades performing and teaching worldwide with an emphasis on folk arts education. Born and raised in Havana, Cuba, Melvis came to performance early through her family lineage and various cultural traditions. As a bandleader, she has performed with her bands Ashedi, Ellas-Son, Melvis Santa Quartet, and La Rumba de Santa at Birdland, Minton’s, the Jazz Gallery, Bronx Museum, Lincoln Center, The Jazz Museum in Harlem, and Aaron Davis Hall. Melvis is a member of Kenny Garrett’s Sextet playing keyboards, percussion, and singing at Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festivals, Blue Note New York, and many other venues across the U.S.
Jasmine Wilson is a singer, composer, poet, educator, and producer who combines jazz and classical music with free improvisation and poetry. Jasmine is a Dream Unfinished Activist Orchestra member, singing in concerts for Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Queens Museum, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. She is half of the improvisation-based musical duo Chez Cherie with pianist Joey Chang. Jasmine has performed and collaborated with artists such as composer/musicians Aakash Mittal, Anjna Swaminathan, Joel Ross, Maria Grand, Sean Mayes, and Stephan Crump. Internationally, she has appeared with Canadian funk/R&B bands What It Is, the Morphtet, Freak Motif, and Kalmunity.
2021-2022 Jazz Leaders Fellows
Charenée Wade is a critically-acclaimed singer, composer, arranger and educator who took first runner-up in the 2010 Thelonious Monk Vocal Competition. A recipient of the 2017 Jazz at Lincoln Center Millennial Swing Award, she has worked with greats including Wynton Marsalis, Christian McBride and Robert Glasper, among many others. Wade is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and has performed at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Jazz Standard, The Apollo, and at festivals worldwide including Montreux, the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival and more. Wade has taught around the world, including at the Aaron Copland School, the Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University, and the Juilliard School.
chareneewade.com | Facebook: @chareneemusic | Instagram & Twitter: @chareneewade
Jordyn Davis is a bassist, composer, songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who was the first African-American woman at Michigan State University to receive a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Composition and the first student to earn degrees in Music Composition and Jazz Studies concurrently (she also recently earned her Master’s from the university). She has composed and arranged over 20 works for film, contemporary classical chamber ensembles, symphony orchestras, wind ensembles, and jazz ensembles. She has also performed and worked with artists such as Rodney Whitaker, Micheal Dease, Bruce Barth, Wycliffe Gordon & The Black Excellence Trombone Choir, Ingrid Jensen, Rick Roe, Etienne Charles and Dee Dee Bridgewater. Davis is the founder of an indie rock/neo-soul project called “Composetheway.”
composetheway.com | Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & Soundcloud: @composetheway
The JLF Committee
This initiative was conceived by the Jazz Leaders Fellowship Committee, whose members play a key role in the selection process.
Fay Victor (Chair)
Ramona Candy
Felisha George
Lezlie Harrison
Marika Hughes
Chiwoniso Kaitano
Toya Lillard
Liliahn Majeed
Rohit Oomman
LaFrae Sci
For additional information, please contact JLF@bkcm.org
The Jazz Leaders Fellowship Committee
Fay Victor, Sound Artist/Composer/Educator (JLF Chair)
“She’s essentially invented her own hybrid of song and spoken word, a scat style for today’s avant-garde.” – The New York Times
Fay Victor is a sound artist and bandleader who uses performance, improvisation and composition to examine representations of modern life and blackness. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Fay’s ‘everything is everything’ creative aesthetic permeates her working approach to the vocal instrument. Having released eleven critically acclaimed albums as a leader, including her latest release,“WE’VE HAD ENOUGH!” with her improvising quartet SoundNoiseFUNK (ESP-Disk) in October 2020 and having performed with luminaries such as Gary Bartz, Archie Schepp, Nicole Mitchell, Randy Weston, Roswell Rudd, Moor Mother and as a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, Victor has shown the through line of her unique vocal force and expansion. An innovative educator, Victor gives talks at institutions around the world and is on the faculty of the College of Performing Arts at the New School where she directs a Master in Music Program for Performer-Composers, teaches interdisciplinary practices and Vocal Performance. Victor teaches at ROC Nation School for Sports, Music and Entertainment at Long Island University where she runs a private vocal studio and the Jazz Salon Ensemble. Moreover, Victor is the Board chair for the Jazz Leaders Fellowship, an initiative of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music to fund Black women/non-binary jazz leaders. Learn more about Fay Victor at www.fayvictor.com.
Follow Fay Victor @freesongsinger on IG, FB and Twitter.
Ramona Candy is a visual artist who draws inspiration from her Caribbean heritage, growing up in Brooklyn, and a dance career spanning over 30 years. She is a culture bearer — motivating others through her art practice; bringing history to life in her most recent body of work; and in dedication to her community. She has work in collections throughout the U.S., and in Timor-Leste through the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies. Her work as an arts administrator includes being the director of the Arts Council at St. Joseph’s University; Clark Center NYC, a dance legacy project; and a founding member of the Future Historical Society at BRIC.
Felisha George is a recording artist, performer, lyricist, filmmaker and conjurer of rhythmic color. Her musical essence is a meditation and invitation to release, restore and self liberate. Felisha can be described as “an agent of her own transformation and evolution,” an embodied learner and a woman honoring lineage. Using hip hop and jazz as a source, her performance, lyricism and creativity are brought forth on stage. George is a word magician, creating allusive duality and soulful flows, a pure rooted storyteller.
Lezlie Harrison is a vocalist both bold and subtle, who brings her distinctive sound to all that she sings – be it jazz, blues, gospel, soul, the Great American Songbook or original compositions. She is a presenter and curator for premier jazz station WBGO, and launched the world-renowned Jazz Gallery along with the late Dale Fitzgerald and trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
Marika Hughes is a cellist, singer, songwriter and native New Yorker from a musical family. Her grandfather was the great cellist Emanuel Feuermann and her parents owned a neighborhood jazz club, Burgundy. Marika holds dual degrees in Political Science and Cello Performance from Barnard College and the Juilliard School, respectively. She’s been a storyteller on The Moth Radio Hour and has worked with Whitney Houston, Lou Reed, Anthony Braxton, David Byrne, Adele, D’Angelo, Idina Menzel, Taylor Mac, Nels Cline and Henry Threadgill, among many others. Marika has self-released three albums: “The Simplest Thing” (2011), “Afterlife Music Radio” (2011) and “New York Nostalgia” (2016). She leads the bands Bottom Heavy and The New String Quartet, and is the Founder of Looking Glass Arts, an artist-led retreat and recording space in Upstate New York that offers fully-funded and sliding-scale residencies to record in the non-profit’s 100 year-old rustic barn studio. Looking Glass Arts prioritizes Black and Brown artists; democratizing access to the space, time and natural beauty critical to artistic growth.
Chiwoniso Kaitano is the Executive Director of Girl Be Heard, a global NGO that develops, amplifies, and celebrates the voices of young women. She has had a long nonprofit career – including time as the Executive Director of Brooklyn’s Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy – and is dedicated to helping organizations at the forefront of arts and culture, social justice, youth education and social services. Chiwoniso has long been involved in the arts scene and serves on the Board of Trustees for The Center for Fiction, International Contemporary Ensemble and the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance.
Toya Lillard is a theater director, artist, activist and educator who has worked extensively in developing curricula and implementing teaching artist training programs in schools. Before becoming the Executive Director of viBE Theater Experience, a nonprofit that empowers young women and nonbinary youth of color, she was the Director of School Programs for The New York Philharmonic’s Education Department. Lillard teaches at The New School and CUNY CityTech, serves on the Board of the New York City Arts in Education Roundtable and is an Affiliate Representative on the Board of the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance.
Liliahn Majeed is the SVP, Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Officer at the Universal Music Group where she promotes innovative and diverse recruiting and retention programs for artists, fans, team members and partners. A 15-year veteran of the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) team marketing and business operations group, she developed meaningful community programming as the Vice president, diversity and inclusion for the NBA.
Rohit Oomman is a jazz guitarist from Brooklyn, NY. He is a freshman at Princeton University who intends to major in Economics and pursue a certificate in Jazz Studies. A former student of the Brooklyn Conservatory, he is excited to be involved with the organization as it continues to expand its resources for a widening array of students and musicians.
LaFrae Sci is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, educator, composer and electro acoustic adventurer. Bedrock to her artistry are the roots and the fruits of the blues from spirituals to Afro Diasporic futuristic soundscapes that explore time travel, prayer, meditation, and the African American ecstatic tradition. To date, she has shared her intentional creativity in 38 countries. LaFrae is also the Executive Director/Director of Artistic Programming at Willie Mae Future Sounds, named after Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton. W.M.F.S. is a year-round, STEAM-based, empowerment-through-music program that includes spiritual activism, Afro Diasporic futurism, critical thinking and leadership, including music technology through the lens of the blues tradition for girls and gender nonconforming youth in New York City.