Walker West Hosts Youth Women in Jazz Workshop At South High

A woman stands in front of a radio banner

Katia Cardenas has no trouble staying busy. In addition to singing professionally throughout the Twin Cities, Cardenas also serves as Program Director for the  Walker West Without Walls initiative and helms their Women in Jazz initiative as well.

This Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025, there is a Youth Women in Jazz Workshop at South High School in Minneapolis. Katia was nice enough to connect with MN Jazz Tracks host Sam Keenan to talk about this initiative in general and Saturday’s workshop in particular. Listen:

This interview originally aired on Minnesota Jazz Tracks on 2/3/25

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Sam Keenan 

Walker West Music Academy in St Paul gets up to a lot of stuff. Walker West’s youth women in jazz workshop is happening Saturday, February 8, at 10am 10 to 4pm at South High School. I caught up with Katia Cardenas. Katia is a musician and singer and performer, and she’s also the  Program Director of Walker West Without Walls.

 

Katia Cardenas (Walker West) 

Part of our programming includes work that’s focused on providing access to music education for target populations in the community, including Black, brownand low income youth, as well as other populations that are typically underserved by our programming, including women in jazz. And so our Women in Jazz Initiative is something that we’ve gotten funding for thanks to a grant from the Minnesota Humanities Center. And we are doing all kinds of programming over this calendar year, including a handful of workshops and jam sessions for women across the community. And upcoming here, we’ve got specifically a youth women in jazz workshop happening this Saturday, February 8, at South High School, from 10am to 4pm

 

Sam Keenan 

I asked Katia to tell me more about this workshop and how it came together.

 

Katia Cardenas (Walker West) 

Yeah. So this workshop is specifically intended for women, non binary and trans youth to get to come and experience jazz for the first time, possibly, or just to get to dig a little deeper into it, if they’ve already been playing, say, in their middle school or high school jazz program. We’ve got clinicians who are pros here in the Twin Cities and beyond, including Lucia Sarmiento, Mary Louise Knutson, Jendeen Forsberg, Liz Draper, and we’ve even got a near peer to some of the students, Ella Grace, who is just about to graduate from DePaul University in Chicago. Part of this program is wanting to highlight women in jazz in our community, and providing an opportunity for the young women in our community to get to see who’s out here, who looks like them, who’s had similar lived experiences as them, and through the various types of programming that we’ve been able to offer through the women in jazz initiative, which is included, you know, in school, residencies, workshops and jam sessions, women in jazz scholarships. We’ve also got a jazz women collective that rehearses weekly at Walker West, which consists of emerging young women, non binary and trans players who are trying to make it professionally here in the cities and kind of supporting them on their journey. And so these artists who are featuring are just just a slice, honestly, of the women who are working here in the Twin Cities, but are names that these young women should absolutely know and can go out and see almost any night of the week.

 

Sam Keenan 

I also asked Katia about her thoughts on the state of women in jazz here in the 21st century.

 

Katia Cardenas (Walker West) 

I think we’ve got a long way to go. There are a lot of women out here who are working professionally, but there’s still, oftentimes the only woman in the room, and the experience that that can impart on a on a person is, I think, more complex than than some might think, you know, there’s a lot of interpersonal dynamics at play. There’s a lot of just challenging things to navigate. I’ve talked to a lot of young women and older women across the community, and learned a lot about just what types of things they navigate when they go it into the world. Oftentimes, they’re telling me about how the people, the men, especially who they collaborate with, they’ve really kind of sussed out energetically to make sure they’re like, safe people to play with, right? It’s not just about like, who’s the most killing player, you know, I want to play with them. It’s like, who’s going to be a supportive person for me to collaborate with, who’s going to be, you know, who’s not going to undermine my decisions, or, you know, make assumptions about me and my abilities. There’s just a lot to navigate that I think a lot of people kind of don’t understand or maybe take for granted.

 

Sam Keenan 

Katia also told me a little bit about their program at Walker West.

 

Katia Cardenas (Walker West) 

So something we like to do in our women in jazz programming is highlight women composers from across history, right? Some of them are still with us. Some of them are already passed. And sometimes that means that we’re also learning women, you know, catalogs who aren’t exclusively jazz, right? Like we’ve done Carole King songs, for example, you know, I think watching the Grammys just last night, you know, Alicia Keys!, you know, is there these incredible women instrumentalists, producers who are out here in the game, but maybe we don’t give all the credit for what they contribute in all the aspects of their artistry. So.You know, they listed off some, you know, women producers who I didn’t recognize. And I would say that often times, when folks are asking me, like, Hey, who are some women composers we could feature, it’s not a quick answer that we all have on hand the same way that we do about, you know, Monk or Ellington or, you know, so many of the greats who, who we know about otherwise in jazz. One of the things that we do with our Women in Jazz Initiative is try to address the barriers to participation for young women, trying to understand kind of like, what’s going on from an early age that’s keeping young women from actually pursuing careers in music. When you look at music education, you know, at the elementary level, often there’s really not much of a gender disparity to note. You know, sometimes we’ll we’ll have more gender norms in in different types of instruments, right? More girls on the flute or the violin or, you know, things like that, and less so on, say, the trumpet or the saxophone. And so the more you follow girls along their journey, you’ll see, you know, once you get into jazz band, there’ll be fewer and fewer women once you get into the more advanced jazz bands, and then once you get into college, again, fewer and fewer and fewer women, kind of, across the board, are going to be involved. And again, those dynamics that we talked about before just tend to come up where people feel like they have to really prove themselves they can’t, you know, have the same safety and security that they need to, just like work things out that you do as a jazz player, right? And I’ve just in talking to some kind of veteran women jazz players, I’m hearing how how challenging that was in their youth, to not have spaces where they felt like they could that they were safe to make mistakes and they weren’t going to be judged just for working their stuff out. And so part of what we’re trying to create is spaces where women can not only see people who are doing what they want to be doing, doing it professionally, but then also creating those safe spaces with women, non binary and trans women all together playing, you know, maybe, well, maybe not. Maybe again, they’re working out the ideas and they’re and they’re understanding more about improvisation. They’re understanding more about what it means to play in a combo and the different dynamics you have to navigate. And we’re just, we’re just trying to create an opportunity for young women to get to build confidence, to build connections to other players, and to have the opportunity to get some reps.

 

Sam Keenan 

I couldn’t let Katia go without asking if she had any shows coming up.

 

Katia Cardenas (Walker West) 

Yeah, I do have some shows coming up. I just got to play a new venue called Nucky’s speakeasy out in Anoka. That was a good time. I’m going to be playing Volsteads Coming up on February 21 and then I’ve also got some dates with my swing band, which is called Katia and the Upswing. We’re doing a Valentine’s show at the Mall of America with TC swing. And then we’ve also got my bi-monthly residency at the Eagles club on March 7. We’re there every other month, that’s every odd month, with a dance lesson ahead of time. And then we play eight to 1030 or 11, and it’s a really good time.

 

Sam Keenan 

Once again, the Walker West Youth Women in Jazz workshop is happening Saturday, February 8, from 10am to 4pm over at South High School, Katia also told me that the jazz women collective has their first public performance this Thursday over at jazz Central, that’s on February 6. They’re calling themselves Mock Turtle. Thanks again to Katia Cardenas for talking with me about this event and her program over at Walker West.

 


More Posts for Show: Minnesota Jazz Tracks

Related Posts