7/26 Sam Spear Late Night Jam Session

Live music is back on stage at The Mad Monkfish! For those who can't make it to the Jazz Baroness Room, Monkfish now streams live all of its performances on their Facebook page. House band plays a set and then invites guests to sit in on this late-night instrumentals jam.

Sam Spear, alto saxophone

Sam Spear is a woodwind instrumentalist, composer, and music educator based in Boston, MA. As a performer, she is at home in a variety of musical settings including swinging quintets, modern jazz orchestras, and chamber ensembles. In addition to her own group, she regularly performs with the Imagine Orchestra directed by Bill Banfield, the Michelle Tucker Quintet, the Mad Monkfish Orchestra directed by Peter Kenagy, and the New England Jazz Collaborative, among others.

She also leads an active life as a composer and arranger with works being performed by groups including the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, Imagine Orchestra, the New England Jazz Collaborative, and Berklee Concert Jazz Orchestra. She writes works for a variety of instrumentations, styles, and experience levels with nearly 100 of her charts available on her sheet music store.

Spear is a professor at Berklee College of Music where she teaches in the Contemporary Writing and Production Department and Five-Week Summer Performance Program. She is an affiliated artist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a member of two ensembles in residence at the Longy School of Music of Bard College. Spear has experience teaching students from elementary through undergraduate levels in topics including music theory, ear training, improvisation, and arranging, as well as private instruction and ensemble coaching.

Gender equality in the jazz community has been a focus of Spear’s efforts. She serves on the board of Jazzhers, a non-profit “committed to shaping the future of jazz by helping young women and non-binary musicians become connected and feel empowered within the jazz community.” She presented her lecture Mary Lou Williams in the Age of #MeToo at the 2019 IAWM and FT&M15 joint conference. Her advocacy work has been featured in Downbeat Magazine’s February 2019 issue and in a news story on Boston’s local NPR station, WBUR. Spear co-founded Women in Jazz Collective, a student-run organization at Berklee College of Music with the mission of empowering female and non-binary jazz musicians.

Spear holds a Master of Music in jazz saxophone performance from New England Conservatory and a Bachelor of Music in saxophone performance and jazz composition from Berklee College of Music, where she attended on a Presidential Scholarship