San Francisco Jazz Hero
California
Trumpeter, bandleader, recording artist, educator and fervent activist for equality of women in the jazz world Ellen Seeling was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1950. She studied with David Baker at Indiana University and was the first woman to earn a jazz degree at that institution. Moving to New York in 1975 with saxophonist Jean Fineberg, her partner, Seeling toured and/or recorded with multiple bands, including Laura Nyro, Chic and Sister Sledge.
Ellen was one of the only women trumpeters on the New York salsa scene in the 1970s, playing lead and jazz with Mario Bauzá, Machito, Ray Barretto and Latin Fever, the all-female Fania Records ensemble.
Seeling and Fineberg formed the fusion band Deuce in 1980, recording two albums of original music. After moving to the Bay Area in 1989, Seeling established the Montclair Women’s Big Band “on the Basie model,” releasing its first album and performing at the Kennedy Center, the Grammys and the Monterey Jazz Festival. In 2009, Seeling founded the Jazzschool Girls’ Jazz & Blues Camp with a professional all-women faculty, which the Oakland Tribune called “her latest groundbreaking project.”
Seeling and attorney Sara Sanderson founded JazzWomen and Girls Advocates (JAGA) in 2015, in an effort to “change the culture of jazz to include women as equal participants in the music we all love.” JAGA’s legal pressure concerning the 30-year absence of women in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra resulted in JALC’s adoption of blind auditions, which, Seeling said at the time, “will increase opportunities for women to join this iconic jazz ensemble.”
Awareness and appreciation of the contributions of women in jazz has grown immensely over the past few decades, as has the presence of women jazz instrumentalists as leaders and bandmembers on stages around the world. This development didn’t arise out of nowhere. Ellen Seeling is the JJA’s 2025 Bay Area Jazz Hero because those changes started and have continued in no small part through her devoted efforts, to the benefit of all.
— Andrew Gilbert and Terri Hinte
JJA Board Members
