About Unladylike Big Band

Celebrating women and gender-diverse instrumentalists in jazz

The Unladylike Big Band is Queensland's premier all-women and gender-diverse big band, dedicated to showcasing, encouraging, and empowering underrepresented voices in jazz.

Despite the significant contributions of women to the genre, jazz remains a male-dominated field. Unladylike exists to challenge that imbalance by creating opportunities for women and gender-diverse musicians to perform, collaborate, lead, and be heard.

un·la·dy·like
/ʌnˈleɪdiˌlaɪk/
adjective
To behave in a way considered improper for a lady.

The band's name reclaims a label historically used to discourage women from participating in activities deemed unsuitable or masculine, including playing brass, drums, and jazz.

Inspired by the generations of women who forged paths in jazz before us, the 17-piece ensemble performs music written and arranged by women from across jazz history and the contemporary scene. Repertoire includes works by Australian composers such as Gemma Farrell, Louise Denson, Judy Bailey, and members of the band itself.

Bringing together some of Queensland's leading jazz musicians, Unladylike Big Band delivers vibrant, powerful performances while championing greater visibility, representation, and opportunity within the jazz community. Above all, Unladylike is a celebration of the musicians already shaping the jazz landscape and those who will follow in their footsteps.

“Women cannot possibly play brass instruments and look pretty… why should they spoil their good looks?” - composer Gustave Kerker, 1904.

Background

While there are infinite examples of gender bias in jazz, here are just a few:

"Why is it that outside of a few sepia females, the woman musician was never born capable of 'sending' anyone farther than the nearest exit?”

– 1938 Downbeat editorial ‘Why Women Musicians Are Inferior’

“You have to fit in in a certain way; you can’t be too feminine or too masculine… I started listening to a lot of the young women and feeling like: ‘Wow, I’m part of the problem if I’m not trying to be part of the solution... We’re at a stage in society where women are saying: no more... There’s nothing wrong with celebrating women without it suggesting that women should be siloed... I blame the system and structures beyond individuals. If your whole life you’ve been told this is what reality is, this is what’s acceptable behaviour, then we just have to educate each other. I don’t even get mad any more. I just shake my head and say: OK, there’s more work to do. Unknown territory can be uncomfortable, but things have changed and are changing”

– Terri Lyne Carrington (drummer, NEA Jazz Master, three-time GRAMMY® award-winner, honorary doctorates from Manhattan School of Music, York University and Berklee College of Music, etc).

“I’ve been late to an on-stage rehearsal for a TV show because it takes the makeup department three times as long to put crap all over my face and do my hair than it does for the male musicians in the band”… “People are expecting that because you are a female and you are playing an instrument like the trombone, that you don't have the sort of power required to play the instrument,'' Barnett says. Or she receives the backhanded compliment of ''you play like a guy''

– Shannon Barnett (Australian trombonist, German Jazz Prize (brass) 2022, Jazz Bell Awards Young Australian Jazz Artist of the Year 2007, etc).

“I’m sure men have to go through awful things too! But I am still part of a minority and if you have ever experienced what that is like, you will know that it is sometimes very lonely and isolating. But I don’t blame men and I don’t want to single anyone out (except sex creep guy of course, ugh). I just want people to understand how and why things can be difficult for women in the industry”

– Shannon Barnett. Full article: http://jazz.org.au/the-debate-women-in-jazz/

“If women were being hired at the same rate as men, we wouldn’t be having this conversation… When I lived in NYC in the 90s, there was one woman trumpet player that was making a successful living on ‘the scene’: Laurie Frink. There may have been other women that I did not meet. But this was who I sought out and looked up to. Laurie told me some pretty disgusting stories, before she passed, of what she endured as a female, a female trumpet player, a female lead player and a female jazz musician. It’s been 30+ years since I came to NYC and met Laurie. I have my own unique set of stories, now. What does that say?”

 - Liesl Whitaker (renowned NYC based lead trumpeter and Broadway musician)

“I took my job very seriously, and never took a single performance for granted. I knew what I had, and that it would be years before another woman held my chair, again, if ever. I had to be on all the time. It was an unimaginable amount of pressure, every single day”

– Liesl Whitaker

“At the Blue Note, one of the people running the session said to me, ‘alright honey, you can sit in if you take your top off,’ and ‘alright baby, can you handle this tempo?’ I'm sure a lot of those antiquated attitudes or perceptions about women in music/women in jazz may have had more of an effect on my career than I realized. It's probably true for all women in any male-dominated career field”

- Sherrie Maricle (drummer, NYU Doctoral Fellowship, 2009 Mary Lou Williams-Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award, Kennedy Center Alliance Award for Outstanding Achievements in the Arts, etc)

Jazz is not an inherently gendered art form and while we have come a long way, there is still more to be done. At this point in time a disproportionate number of the major big bands worldwide employ no women instrumentalists (apart from subs). We would love these calculations to be incorrect so please correct/update us if we have missed any women who occupy these chairs full-time.

·        Hr-Big Band (Frankfurt Radio Big Band) employs no women

·        Wynton Marsalis’s Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra employed their first full-time woman in 2026 Alexa Tarantino (alto saxophone)

·        Vanguard Jazz Orchestra employs no women full-time

·        BBC Big Band employs no women full-time

·        Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band employs no women full-time

·        The Count Basie Orchestra employs no women full-time

·        The Birdland Big Band employs no women full-time

·        WDR Big Band employs one woman full-time Karolina Strassmayer (alto) and formerly Shannon Barnett (trombone)

“You can’t be what you can’t see” - Marian Wright Edelman. Without other women to look up to, many young women are opting out of music careers before giving it a chance. To counter this marginalization, the Unladylike Big Band puts women at the forefront and celebrates the phenomenal musicianship of women in the jazz scenes throughout the world.