Shannon J. Effinger
Shannon J. Effinger has been a freelance arts journalist for more than a decade. Her writing on all things jazz and music regularly appears in Pitchfork, Bandcamp, Jazziz, Jazzwise, and Downbeat. As of the fall of 2020, her arts coverage can also be found in The New York Times and The Washington Post; the latter features her Sunday arts cover story on Marshall Allen, the longtime leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra.
Earlier this summer, Effinger made her cinematic debut as a featured critic in the documentary UNIVERSE, the rediscovered orchestral suite by Wayne Shorter, written more than 50 years ago for Miles Davis, and left unrecorded and largely untouched until it was revisited by Davis' protégé, the late trumpeter Wallace Roney. UNIVERSE will have its North American premiere at this year's DOC NYC, the nation's largest documentary festival.
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In 2021, Shannon J. Effinger celebrated the giants who embody of Black genius. -
Half of the top 10 spots in 2019's NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll went to women. But a deeper look at the data from across the poll's lifetime complicates claims about women's equality in jazz.
