MAIDEN VOYAGE--ROUGH SAILING

A few weeks ago, at the Hyatt on Sunset in West Hollywood, Ann Patterson’s Maiden Voyage orchestra played to a crowded and enthusiastic roomful of music lovers. The ensemble spirit, the compositions and the soloists all represented big-band jazz at its highest contemporary level.

What the audience didn’t know was that none of the members can make a living simply out of working in this exceptional ensemble. Acclaimed by viewers and reviewers at the Monterey, Playboy and Concord jazz festivals, playing every kind of job from a shopping mall opening to a Korean variety show, Maiden Voyage is still not a regularly working band. Sometimes they do not perform as a unit for weeks on end.

In fact, what has happened to the 18-woman orchestra, and particularly to the leader, during the six years since Patterson assumed leadership, symbolizes both the problems that face women musicians and the advances that they have finally made.

The Texas-born Patterson, who has mastered a dozen instruments--saxophones, clarinets, flutes, oboe, English horn--and is qualified to play them in the most demanding of settings, feels that the perennial discrimination against women is breaking down. Sexism still exists, of course, but less rampantly.

“I’m certainly getting more and better work than I was five or six years ago,” she says. “Last winter, I played about seven woodwind instruments for three months in a show at the Mark Taper Forum. It was an avant-garde musical and we improvised a lot--very stimulating. I still do a fair amount of studio work, though that’s certainly no living in itself--but it isn’t for most male players either. Then there are what we call casuals--weddings, bar mitzvahs, dinner dances, fund-raisers; I get to play a lot of those. Even Maiden Voyage itself does some.”

In a horn-by-horn rundown of the other members’ activities, Patterson pointed up how varied are the opportunities and achievements:

“The trumpets--well, Louise Baranger, our lead trumpeter, works mainly with the Harry James band and free-lances around Los Angeles. Marissa Pasquale, who’s a recent graduate of USC, works quite a bit with groups at Disneyland, where for a long time they hired no women musicians; she also has a day job. So does Stacy Rowles, but Stacy is now working with the all-female group Alive! and plays jobs fairly often with her father (pianist Jimmy Rowles); in fact, next month they’re doing the North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland and then the Hollywood Bowl with Woody Herman. Jodi Gladstone does casuals, teaches music in a private school and plays in a Latin band. Ann King manages to play music for a living: she’s worked with Roger Neumann and some of the other good bands around L.A.

“The trombones: Betty O’Hara is now very active in TV--she works in the orchestra for ‘Hill Street Blues,’ ‘The A-Team’ and other shows, as well as playing jazz-group jobs. Betty has the luxury of turning down casuals, which I think is wonderful! (O’Hara, the band’s senior member, has had a 40-year career, playing everything from fluegelhorn to double-bell euphonium.) Christy Belicki just graduated from USC; she has done some work at Disneyland too. Martha Schumann, who’s a recent addition to our band, is still a student at Cal State Long Beach. Jackie Wollinger plays bass trombone, an instrument that’s not much in demand; still, she works in a few bands locally and has a day gig.

“The saxes aren’t doing badly. Kathryn Moses, who came here from Canada, is also a wonderful classical flutist and bassoonist; she was very busy in Toronto, and in L.A. she’s getting established doing all kinds of work--casuals, studio jobs, especially on flute. Jennifer Hall, who plays alto with us, is a graduate student in classical saxophone at USC, just got her master’s degree, and has a part-time day job at a woodwind repair shop. Cathy Cochran does gigs here and there, but not enough to be self-supporting, so she’s been waitressing. Barbara Watts, our baritone sax player, is fairly busy mainly as a music copyist, for TV shows.”

Completing the band is the rhythm section. Patterson’s exceptional drummer, Jeannette Wrate, finds work on the women’s music circuit (that is, with female groups that play folk or pop music with feminist lyrics) in addition to playing in the studios and teaching private students. The percussionist, Judy Chilnick, also is busy, dividing her time between shows, classical and pop studio work and concerts with the New American Orchestra. Liz Kinnon, the band’s current pianist, who makes part of her livelihood composing and arranging, has managed to enter the lucrative jingle field.

The time when none of these women will have to supplement their income with day jobs may not be far away. Nevertheless, the outlook for Maiden Voyage as a unit remains clouded, despite its unique reputation. Normally, the orchestra draws on a diversified library of jazz arrangements--some by present or former members of the band such as Liz Kinnon, Betty O’Hara and the pianist Kathy Rubbicco, as well as by outside contributors including Nan Schwartz, one of the few successful women studio composers, along with Tommy Newsom, Bobby Shew, Sammy Nestico, Roger Neumann and numerous others.

“Overall,” Patterson sums up, “things are quite a bit better for many of us, individually and collectively. We have reached a high standard of performance; there’s a great deal of loyalty and dedication. Despite all the problems and the normal turnover you’d expect in any band, there are still seven of us who were here in 1980. Everybody wants to see it keep going--but of course, the big hang-up is getting a record deal.”

Landing a recording contract for a big jazz orchestra is a problem unrelated to considerations of sex. Male bands have had the same difficulty; only Maynard Ferguson and a handful of others record regularly. Even the Ellington and Basie bands have done very little since their original leaders died; Toshiko Akiyoshi had to form her own company.

“There have been several opportunities to record,” Patterson says, “but I’ve rejected them because they didn’t involve paying the musicians. There are a lot of big bands with albums out that made them for free, to get the exposure. I’m not willing to do it that way.”

Maiden Voyage could not record for less than $12,500, though by the standards of pop musicians, who may stay in the studios for weeks or months overdubbing and fiddling around with electronics, this is chicken feed.

The logical course for any group so well qualified, it seems to me, would be to set up a tour of Japan, where they would create a sensation, and where demands for their services in the recording studios are a foregone conclusion.

This is not simply the best all-female orchestra; it is one of the big bands most deserving of preservation on records. Once the records are out (in Japan first, let us assume, but some American company would be quick to pick them up as long as the initial expenses are avoided), airplay could lead to demand for their services.

As a result of Patterson’s recent appearance with the orchestra and as a panelist at the convention of the National Association of Jazz Educators, and a follow-up article she wrote for Jazz Educators’ Journal, there is now real interest in Maiden Voyage at the college level. “If only we could get an album out in the next few months, I can foresee some kind of college tour a year from now.

Meanwhile, other healthy signs presage better things. Next fall, Patterson will spend six weeks at USC rehearsing the college jazz ensemble, culminating in a concert of music written or arranged by women--among them Toshiko Akiyoshi, Melba Liston, Nan Schwartz, Betty O’Hara, Marian McPartland and Liz Kinnon. In January, Patterson will be in residence at Hamlin University in St. Paul, working with an all-female band, its personnel drawn from surrounding colleges.

Admittedly there is an element of self-separatism here, but the parallel is clear: At one time, black musicians, unwanted by white leaders, could only work in all-black bands. That form of segregation is slowly dying out; can its gender counterpart be far behind?