Shirazette & The Healing Sessions Part 1

SANTA MONICA, CA - New York City based musician Shirazette Tinnin arrived in brisk, sunny Santa Monica in the beginning of February, and she could not wait to get started. As a nationally renowned Jazz drummer, Tinnin was selected as 18th Street Arts Center 2020 Make Jazz Fellow for emerging Jazz composers. During her three-month stay in one of 18th Streets spacious live/work studios, Tinnin will compose a new album about her time in Santa Monica, intermingled with how she has navigated a recent period of intense grief after the passing of her father three years ago, and her mother just this past June.

I am thinking of this album as The Healing Project, and it’s about expressing the complex hills and valleys of grief. In a way, this is giving me time to mourn, to mourn through music.

Tinnin is also an accomplished educator, founding a program called Books, Beats, and Basketball (she played Division 1 basketball at Appalachian State University) that serves kids in precarious housing or family situations through combining arts, athletics, and academics. Tinnin describes her approach to pedagogy:

In many ways, telling a story through a book is similar to how you tell a story through song. And the physicality (especially being a drummer) of performing that music is very akin to athletics. All of these things are connected and feed one another.

Shirazette is a Fulbright Scholar recipient, clinician, touring artist and health coach who has published articles through Modern Drummer and Tom Tom Magazine that involve keeping the musician healthy.

She has shared the stage with Alicia Keys on BET’s Black Girls Rock, House Drummer for The Meredith Viera Show 1st Season Spring 2015, Nicole Mitchell (flautist, AACM)Alicia Olatuja and Allan Harris as well as her own projects including Sonic WallPaper.

Her third album featuring her band Sonic WallPaper will release in Fall 2020.Shirazette endorses Vic Firth, Sabian, LP and Canopus Drums.