Biography

Her father was a principal in the Detroit public schools, and her mother was a defense contract administrator for the U.S. government.

She started playing piano at age seven and attended Cass Technical High School. She graduated from Howard University, one of the first students to earn a jazz studies degree there. She earned an M.A. in ethnomusicology from the University of Pittsburgh.

Her jazz improvisations can be heard on albums she recorded with saxophonist-composers Ornette Coleman and Oliver Lake, drummer Ralph Peterson Jr., bassist Charlie Haden, drummer Paul Motian, and many others.

Has three children: Laila, Barbara and Wallace.

Of Cherokee ancestry.