All-female big band inspires women Maine-based Edith Jones Project to be centerpiece of BSO concert

It’s not unusual for music groups to take the name of historical figures they admire or whose own work they hope to emulate in some way. Think of the Miro String Quartet, named after surrealist painter Joan Miro. Or the Cassatt String Quartet, an all-women group whose muse is impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.

Then there is the Edith Jones Project. The Maine-based, all-women big-band jazz band will be the centerpiece of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra’s annual Chinese New Year Celebration and Dance on Feb. 11 at the Bangor Civic Center.

But who is Edith Jones? The better question might be: Who isn’t Edith Jones?

“Edith is my dog,” said Alison Jones, a tenor sax player who co-founded the group in 2003. “It was a temporary name until we could thing up something better. But we never really did. The band sounds like a very serious endeavor. Only when you know who Edith Jones is do you learn the humor of it.”

Except in an odd way, something better did come along for the group. Turns out, Edith Jones is the birth name of Edith Wharton, the novelist who wrote “Ethan Fromme” and “The House of Mirth.” It is also the name of Edith Irby Jones, the first woman physician to be elected president of the American Medical Association. And it is the name of Judge Edith Jones, a Ronald Reagan appointee who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Retroactively, the Edith Jones Project has come to represent a collective of driven women, and, more than the barky Yorkshire terrier, the name suits the 17 members whose own backgrounds – as musicians, professors, mothers, artists and activists – blend a broad swath of experience.

Jones created the group because, over the years, she found she was often the only woman playing at big-band gigs. She handpicked the members, who range in age from 24 to 74, and began a rigorous rehearsal schedule. Organizing meetings is one of the biggest challenges the group faces because of other professional commitments and the far-flung locations of the players who live between Bangor and New Hampshire.

“Everybody in the band has played in ensembles, and usually they have been outnumbered by men,” Jones said. “Frankly, I thought the all-women part would be a gimmick. But it has become a sisterhood.”

For many of the classically trained musicians, Edith Jones has been their first time playing jazz. But it was the opportunity to play with all-women musicians that drew most of the performers.

“The spirit is phenomenal,” said Michelle Kingston, lead trumpet player and the band’s music director. “We’re having a blast when we play. There’s real synergy and support. Jazz is sort of the last frontier for women in music.”

As with several of the band mates, Kingston, an employee at Great Works Internet in Biddeford, tells a childhood story of being drawn to an instrument associated with male players. Her father was a cornet player, and she picked up the instrument before her little brother could.

“My father was a sweet, gentle man, but he was a product of his generation,” she said. “He probably would have preferred I play a different instrument. But I made a beeline for the trumpet. There was a fight – not a big one – and he gave in. I guess he couldn’t wait for my brother.”

Lori Wingo, who also plays trumpet, said she took up the instrument out of spite.

At the instrument try-out in sixth grade, her mother suggested “girl” instruments, such as the clarinet or flute.

“My brother had an old army bugle,” said Wingo, an assistant director of the Upward Bound Program at the University of Maine and a member of the BSO. “I picked it up and never looked back. There are inroads being made these days with female trumpet players. That’s part of our mission with Edith Jones: to get females out of the mindset of my mother and the ‘girl instrument.’ We say: Play what you develop a passion for.”

Rehearsals are held every other week at various locations around the state typically in the Portland or Augusta areas where most of the players live. Many of the performers are teachers and have access to band rooms and halls. But they’ve also held practice sessions in Jones’ garage in the summer.

The inaugural concert in Portland two winters ago sold out two nights in a row, more than 100 people turned away at the door, according to Jones. Now the group plays professionally about once a month, but the calendar is getting busier as the group becomes better known.

This weekend’s concert will also be the premiere of a jazz work by a woman composer. Members of the Edith Jones Project commissioned Beth Weimann, a UM professor of music and former clarinetist with the BSO, to write a big-band tune for the group.

The six-minute “Winifred Goes Outside” has a “classical slow introduction, like some Stravinsky, but then goes into a more driving swing section,” said Weimann. “It has overtones of Weather Report and Gene Krupa.”

And who is Winifred?

“A corgi I was babysitting last October when I was on my way to the place I went to write the piece,” said Weimann.

Jones laughed at the reference to yet another dog.

“The music reminds me of a dog waiting all day to go out, and then getting to go out, and then bursting into the walk,” she said.

Edith Jones – all of them – would surely approve.

The Bangor Symphony Orchestra will present the Edith Jones Project and premiere of “Winifred Goes Outside” at the annual benefit Chinese New Year Celebration and Dance, 7 p.m.-midnight, Feb. 11, at the Bangor Civic Center. Tickets are $35 per person and $250 per table of eight. For information, call 942-5555. For information about The Edith Jones Project, visit www.edithjonesproject.com.