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Research Collaborator

Harvard University

Dr. Monson won the Sonneck Society's 1998 Irving Lowens Prize for the best book in American music for Saying Something: Jazz Improvisation and Interaction (1996). She was the editor of The African Diaspora: A Musical Prospective (2000) and the author of Freedom Sounds: Jazz, Civil Rights, and Africa, 1950-1967 (2007). She has published articles in Ethnomusicology, Critical Inquiry, World of Music, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Women and Music, and the Black Music Research Journal. She was also a founding member of the nationally known Klezmer Conservatory Band, and plays trumpet with jazz and salsa bands. She has a PhD and an MA in musicology from New York University and a BM from New England Conservatory.

Improvisation is, simply put, being and living this very moment. No one can hide in music, and improvising in music is to be truly in this very moment and being completely yourself, with all your qualities and faults. It is probably the most honest state for a human being to be in.

– John McLaughlin in an interview with Daniel Fischlin.