Joanne Brackeen
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Joanne Brackeen (born July 26, 1938) is an American jazz pianist and music educator.
She was born Joanne Grogan in Ventura, California. She attended the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, but devoted herself to jazz by imitating Frankie Carle albums. That said, she preferred Charlie Parker and bebop.
Her career began in the late 1950s while working with names like Charles Lloyd, but in 1969 it began to "take off" as she became the first woman in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.
She led her own trio and quartet. She served on the grant panel for the National Endowment for the Arts, toured the Middle East with the US State Department as sponsor, and had solo performances at Carnegie Hall.
She has 25 albums as a lead musician and is a professor at the Berklee College of Music.
