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MJ Territo
MJ Territo is a jazz vocalist, writer and music educator.
About Me
As a vocalist, MJ performs regularly in venues throughout the NYC area. She is the founder of the Ladies Day Jazz Ensemble, a group of women musicians dedicated to discovering and performing the compositions of classic and contemporary jazz women. Their CD, Ladies Day, was released to critical acclaim in the jazz press. As a music educator, MJ has taught students from 8 months to 80 years old. She is the creator of “Singin’ and Swingin’: Adventures in Jazz, Blues and Improvisation”, which she has taught in libraries and other community settings. A former romance novelist and ghost writer, MJ now writes for a variety of arts publications.
My Jazz Story
My parents loved swing music and I grew up listening to big bands and singers like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan, and
Rosemary Clooney, to name a few. As a teenage dance student I attended an arts camp that also had a jazz program where I was introduced to the music of
Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and many more. I never stopped listening to jazz after that. In college I wore out a Bill Evans album, Peace
Pieces. After a stint of theatre and cabaret singing, I had a career as a writer and editor, and later as a music educator specializing in early childhood
music education. For fun, I studied jazz piano and improvisation, and when my family was grown, picked up singing again, this time putting my jazz studies to
use. I love to educate people about this great music, and to discover and sing songs that have been unfairly forgotten, especially those written by women
composers.
