photo - A celebrated saxophonist Joie Taylor has backed jazz stars like Delfayo Marsalis, Javon Jackson and Larry Coryell at Maui Jazz & Blues Festival shows. Courtesy photo

Performing at the Maui Jazz & Blues Festival Series “Women in Jazz” concert at the Ocean Vodka Farm on May 25, Joie Taylor fell in love with the saxophone as a 10-year-old living in Alabama, hearing John Coltrane’s legendary album “A Love Supreme.”

“I grew up in a household with a lot of jazz,” Taylor recalled. “My mom was always listening to everything from big band to small band. But I never liked what she listened to until she gave me a John Coltrane album. I had the cassette tape and went in my room and I listened, and before I knew it, I’d listened to the whole thing. I was a little girl in Alabama and I felt like I was being transported to outer space.”

After that epiphany, Taylor eventually persuaded her mother to buy her a saxophone and her career path was set along with later earning a PhD from Cornel in engineering.

“I nagged my mom for about two or three years,” she said. “At that time, in the United States you didn’t have a lot of women playing the stronger horns, so she was a little opposed. She wanted to push the flute.”

A Maui resident for 20 years, she can be heard on Thursday evenings playing sax at the Kula Lodge. “It’s a great dinner set, solo with tracks,” said Taylor. “Some standards like ‘Fly Me to the Moon.’ I usually always do a John Coltrane number and I also love Charlie Parker, so I will always play a Charlie Parker tune. I throw in some funk every once in a while.”

This is for a dinner show?

“I can pull it off to where people are just loving it,” she noted. “You’d be surprised. Sometimes I’ll play (Charlie Parker’s) ‘Moose the Mooche,’ and people are like, ‘wow, that was great.'”

Taylor’s path to Maui included studying at Clark Atlanta University and playing in their Jazz Orchestra and touring all over Europe including the famed Montreux Jazz Festival. “That gave me a huge exposure,” she said. “They had charts owned by Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy Gillespie started the band. We were constantly doing shows with some of the majors, like Gladys Knight and Nancy Wilson.”

At Montreux the whole band was invited to the festival founder’s Swiss Alps house where they ended up performing with Bette Middler. “It was a spontaneous thing. Spontaneous things can be amazing sometimes. That was a memory that I’ll never forget.”

After college she played in various bands, “from all different genres. Mostly jazz, but also reggae and Afrobeat,” including Atlanta’s Grammy nominated Mausiki Scales & The Common Ground Collective. “We did Fela Kuti repertoire,” she said. “We had some originals, but we were mostly Fela. Our lead singer ended up being the lead actor in the ‘Fela!’ story on Broadway and he won a Tony.”

As a woman playing jazz she has enjoyed delving into the history of female jazz musicians in America and was intrigued to find out about the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an all women big band founded in Mississippi, which included players from China, Mexico and Hawaii.

“Who knew about these ladies, right? It was World War II and jazz was keeping clubs and business. They had to have a big band, but a lot of men were drafted. That’s what motivated owners to start hiring women. Women were already playing, they just weren’t getting the bigger gigs. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm were the most well known. They wrote their original charts and played standards as well. They had a Native Hawaiian trumpet player in the orchestra, and were a very diverse group.”

A frequent guest at Blue Note shows on Oahu, Taylor has played at Maui Jazz & Blues Festival shows for 10 years including backing Delfayo Marsalis, Javon Jackson and Larry Coryell.

Future gigs will include a “Saxophone Spotlight” show on June 29 at the Ocean Vodka Farm where she will perform with pianist Jeff Helmer, and an “In the Swing of Things” show of music and aerials at the ProArts Playhouse on July 19.

For the upcoming “Women in Jazz” concert she will be accompanied by Louise Lambert on piano. “It will be mostly standards like ‘Stolen Moments,’ ‘Autumn Leaves’ and ‘Summertime,'” she said. “Mostly songs that people are going to recognize as kind of classic jazz numbers.”

Tyler performs at the Maui Jazz & Blues Festival’s “Women in Jazz” concert at the Ocean Vodka Farm on May 25. It also features Mama’s Jazz Duo with Louise Lambert and the Lydia Panzik Jazz Duo. Admission is $5.