49 Women jazz pianists

Toshiko Akiyoshi is a Japanese-American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader.

Geri Antoinette Allen was an American jazz pianist, composer, and educator. In addition to her career as a performer and bandleader, Allen was also an associate professor of music at the University of Pittsburgh and the director of the university's Jazz Studies program.

Brittany Anjou is a New York City-based musician, composer, pianist, vibraphonist and producer from Seattle, Washington. She performs with her own jazz groups, directs ensembles, works as a sideman and leads several projects as a composer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and songwriter.

Clarice Assad is a Brazilian-American composer, pianist, arranger and singer from Rio de Janeiro. She is influenced by popular Brazilian culture, Romanticism, world music, and jazz. She comes from a musical family, which includes her father, guitarist Sergio Assad, her uncle, guitarist Odair Assad, and her aunt, singer songwriter Badi Assad.

Carla Bley is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and bandleader. An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator over the Hill, as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other artists, including Gary Burton, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Art Farmer, John Scofield and her ex-husband Paul Bley.

Beryl Booker was an American swing pianist of the 1950s.

Hadda Brooks was an American pianist, vocalist and composer. Her first single, "Swingin' the Boogie", which she composed, was issued in 1945. She was billed as "Queen of the Boogie". She sang at Hawaii's statehood ceremony in 1959 and was asked for a private audience by Pope Pius XII.

Liane Carroll is an English vocalist, pianist and keyboardist.

Alice Coltrane, also known by her adopted Sanskrit name Turiyasangitananda or Turiya Alice Coltrane, was an American jazz musician and composer, and in her later years a swamini. One of the few harpists in the history of jazz, she recorded many albums as a bandleader, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s for Impulse! and other major record labels. She was married to jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane, with whom she performed in 1966–67.

Sylvie Courvoisier is a composer, pianist and improviser.

Marilyn Crispell is an American jazz pianist and composer. Scott Yanow described her as "a powerful player... who has her own way of using space... She is near the top of her field." Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote: "Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano... She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz." In addition to her own extensive work as a soloist or bandleader, Crispell is also known as a longtime member of saxophonist Anthony Braxton's quartet in the 1980s and '90s.

Connie Crothers was an American jazz improviser and pianist.

Sophia Domancich is a French pianist and jazz composer.

Kaja Draksler is a Slovenian pianist and composer.

Eliane Elias is a Brazilian jazz pianist, singer, composer and arranger.

Amina Figarova is an Azerbaijani jazz pianist and composer who is now based in Manhattan. Trained as a classical pianist in Baku, she became interested in the local folk music, later specializing in jazz. Since the late 1980s, together with her husband, the flutist Bart Platteau, she has performed in jazz festivals around the globe.

Anke Helfrich is a German jazz pianist and composer.

Gwyneth Herbert is a British singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist and record producer. Initially known for her interpretation of jazz and swing standards, she is now established as a writer of original compositions, including musical theatre. She has been described as "an exquisite wordsmith" with "a voice that can effortlessly render any emotion with commanding ease" and her songs as being "impressively crafted and engrossing vignette[s] of life's more difficult moments".

Catherine Davis Higgins is an American voice actress, singer, and jazz pianist.

Lisa Kristine Hilton is an American jazz pianist, bandleader, producer, and composer based in Southern California. Her compositions blend jazz and blues with minimalism, classical, and avant-garde music. Since the early 2000s she has recorded with Antonio Sánchez, Larry Grenadier, Christian McBride, and Sean Jones.

Jutta Hipp was a jazz pianist and composer. Born in Leipzig in the Weimar Republic, she initially listened to jazz in secret, as it was not approved of by the Nazi authorities. After surviving World War II, she became a refugee, often lacking food and other necessities. By the early 1950s, she was a touring pianist and soon led her own bands. Critic Leonard Feather heard Hipp perform in Germany in 1954, recorded her, and organized her move to the United States the following year. Club and festival appearances soon followed, as did album releases.

Makiko Hirabayashi is a Japanese jazz pianist based in Denmark. She started to play the piano at the age of four, and subsequently violin at nine. As a teenager, she became interested in composing film music and won a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she became more involved with jazz and improvisation. After graduation, she moved to Copenhagen to start her career as a pianist and composer.

Yoko Kanno is a Japanese composer, arranger and musician best known for her work on the soundtracks of anime films, television series, live-action films, video games, and advertisements. She was born in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. She has written scores for Cowboy Bebop, Darker than Black, Macross Plus, Turn A Gundam, The Vision of Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Wolf's Rain, Kids on the Slope, Genesis of Aquarion and Terror in Resonance, and has worked with the directors Hirokazu Kore-eda, Yoshiyuki Tomino, Shinichirō Watanabe and Shōji Kawamori. Kanno has also composed music for pop artists Maaya Sakamoto and Kyōko Koizumi. She is also a keyboardist, and is the frontwoman for the Seatbelts, who perform many of Kanno's compositions and soundtracks.

Diana Jean Krall is a Canadian jazz pianist and singer, known for her contralto vocals. She has sold more than 6 million albums in the US and over 15 million albums worldwide. On December 11, 2009, Billboard magazine named her the second Jazz Artist of the Decade (2000–09), establishing her as one of the best-selling artists of her time.

Evelina De Lain is a London-based classical and jazz pianist, composer, author, performance coach, educator and producer known for her crossover composition style.

Anja Lauvdal is a Norwegian jazz musician and composer.

Joanna Clare MacGregor is a British concert pianist, conductor, composer, and festival curator. She is Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and a professor of the University of London. She is currently artistic director of the International Summer School & Festival at Dartington Hall.

Rita Marcotulli is an Italian jazz pianist and composer.

Zela Margossian is an Australian pianist of Armenian heritage. Born in Beirut, she is currently based in Sydney.

Tania Maria is a Brazilian artist, singer, composer, bandleader and piano player, singing mostly in Portuguese or English. Her Brazilian-style music is mostly vocal, sometimes pop, often jazzy, and includes samba, bossa, Afro-Latin, pop and jazz fusion.

Margaret Marian McPartland, OBE, was an English-American jazz pianist, composer and writer. She was the host of Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on National Public Radio from 1978 to 2011.

Myra Melford is an American avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Melford was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as an "explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn't seem to have been designed for."

Consuela Lee Moorehead was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, music theory professor, and the founder of the Springtree/Snow Hill Institute for the Performing Arts. She fought to establish an arts school in rural Alabama, Moribund Academy. She is sometimes known as Consuela Lee or Consuela Lee Morehead.

Audrey Morris was an American singer and pianist who specialized in jazz ballads.

Aziza Mustafa Zadeh is an Azerbaijani singer, pianist, and composer who plays a fusion of jazz and mugam with classical and avant-garde influences.

Amina Claudine Myers is an American jazz pianist, organist, vocalist, composer, and arranger.

Wilhelmina Madison Goodson, known professionally as Billie Pierce was an American jazz pianist and singer, who performed and recorded with her husband De De Pierce. Her style has been described as a "potent mixture of barrelhouse, boogie-woogie, and ragtime". After settling in New Orleans in 1930, she played in the bands of A.J. Piron, Alphonse Picou, Emile Barnes, and George Lewis.

Zoe Rahman is an English jazz composer and pianist.

Claire Ritter is an American composer and pianist working in a style that fuses jazz with classical, new music, and occasionally other world music cultures.

Irene Louise Rosnes, known professionally as Renee Rosnes, is a Canadian jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.

Patrice Louise Rushen is an American jazz pianist and R&B singer. She is also a composer, record producer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and music director.

Irène Schweizer is a Swiss jazz and free improvising pianist. She was born in Schaffhausen, in 1941. She has performed and recorded numerous solo piano performances as well as performing as part of the Feminist Improvising Group, whose members include Lindsay Cooper, Maggie Nichols, Georgie Born and Sally Potter. She has also performed a series of duets with drummers Pierre Favre, Louis Moholo, Andrew Cyrille, Günter Sommer, Han Bennink, Hamid Drake, as well as in trio and quartet sessions with others, including John Tchicai, Evan Parker and Peter Kowald. With Yusef Lateef, Uli Trepte and Mani Neumeier she performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1967. One of her most enduring collaborations is with the improvising musician Rüdiger Carl.

Dorothy Sloop, also later known as Dorothy Sloop Heflick, was an American jazz pianist who performed with female jazz bands. A native of Ohio, her nickname was Sloopy, and she was likely the inspiration behind the song "Hang On Sloopy" by the rock band The McCoys. The No. 1 single became the official rock song of Ohio in 1985 and is used by the Ohio State University marching band.

Aki Takase is a Japanese jazz pianist and composer.

Norma Louise Teagarden was a jazz pianist.

Hiromi Uehara , known professionally as Hiromi, is a Japanese jazz composer and pianist. She is known for her virtuosic technique, energetic live performances and blend of musical genres such as stride, post-bop, progressive rock, classical and fusion in her compositions.

Jessica Jennifer Williams is an American jazz pianist and composer.

Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist, arranger, and composer. She wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than one hundred records. Williams wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Dizzy Gillespie.

Rachel Carmel Nicolazzo, better known as Rachel Z, and now Rachel Z Hakim, is a jazz and rock pianist and keyboardist. She has recorded 10 solo albums as a jazz musician. Her musical style has been described by The Guardian as: "unlike singer/pianists Diana Krall, Norah Jones or Jamie Cullum, whose keyboard skills are closer to the song-based jazz mainstream, Rachel Z is an improviser whose spontaneous playing is by no means eclipsed by the work of presiding geniuses such as Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner".