Karen Borca

Karen Borca is a pioneer of the bassoon in Avant-garde Jazz and Free Jazz. Borca studied music at the University of Wisconsin with John Barrows and Arthur Weisberg, graduating in 1971. While at the University of Wisconsin, she met Cecil Taylor, who taught at the university,  during the 1969/1971 academic years. Borca studied with Taylor, played in his big bands, ensembles, and the Cecil Taylor Unit, and was his assistant, while he worked in the Black Music Program at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She was an assistant to Taylor's longtime collaborator, saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, an artist-in-residence at Bennington College in Vermont in 1974. Borca married Lyons and played with his ensemble, until he died in 1986. ​Her bands played at the Berlin Jazz Festival, Taklos Festival in Switzerland, Jazz Happening in Finland, Vision Festivals in USA, and many other concerts, clubs, and venues. Her quartet and 10-piece ensemble, Tentet played in the Newport Jazz Salute to Women in Jazz Festivals in New York in 1978 and 1979. She was a representative of the US as a member of Canaille, an international group of women composers at the Gulhbenkian Art Center in Lisbon, Portugal in 1990. She performed and recorded with some of the most important pioneers of Avant-Garde Jazz and Free Jazz, including Cecil Taylor, as a member of his large ensembles and unit from 1970 to 1989,  Jimmy Lyons for 12 years, and with Bill Dixon, Andrew Cyrille, William Parker, and Paul Murphy.

https://www.karenborca.com/

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