bio

Devon Gates is a bassist, vocalist, and composer from Atlanta, Georgia, now based between Boston, MA and Brooklyn, NY. Through studying anthropology and jazz performance at Harvard University and Berklee College of Music, she has worked with Terri Lyne Carrington, Linda May Han Oh, Vijay Iyer, Danilo Perez, Claire Chase, Yosvanny Terry, and esperanza spalding, and has performed with Social Science, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Susie Ibarra, Michael Mayo, Alexa Tarantino, Immanuel Wilkins, Kenny Werner, and Tia Fuller. In 2020, she released her first EP, “Voice/Bass” on Bandcamp, followed by the release of single “skipped that step” in spring 2023. In 2022 her original composition “Don’t Wait” was published in Berklee Press’ “New Standards” collection of 101 lead sheets by female jazz composers.

For her work as a composer, Gates has won the inaugural Marion Brown Prize, a HerVoice prize (Chicago Acapella), and the 2024 First Commission award from ComposersNow, along with the Bohemian Prize (’23) and a John Green Prize (’22) from the Harvard Music Department, and a commission for the MassArt Museum (’22). Her pieces have been programmed by the Harvard Choruses, Chicago Acapella, Bowdoin College, and National Sawdust. She is a Mutual Mentorship for Musicians fellow and Betty Carter Jazz Ahead alum, and has performed at Joe’s Pub, the Monterey Jazz Festival, London Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, DC Jazz Festival, Winter JazzFest, the Kennedy Center, Roulette Intermedium, and SFJazz. She performed her first tour in Asia (Ulaanbataar, Mongolia, and Osaka and Tokyo, Japan) in August 2023, followed by a fall 2023 term abroad in London, UK at the Royal Academy of Music, and a January 2024 Italy tour.

Her Harvard Opportunes arrangement and live solo performance of “Hard Place” by H.E.R. went viral on TikTok, garnering the attention of Michael Buble and Jason Derulo, and later winning her a CARA Acapella Award for Best Soloist on the 2022 studio album recording. She also works in varied interdisciplinary settings, from scoring a short film for the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute exhibition on seminal ethnomusicologist Dr. Eileen Southern, to collaborating with the Harvard Ballet Company to set dance to her original music. She is currently developing a string quartet in collaboration with playwright Phillip Howze, to be premiered in February 2024 as part of his theatrical work, “Self Portraits” (Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn, NYC).

Devon is also a passionate educator and facilitator, who has held faculty positions at Harvard College (Music Department Teaching Fellow to Prof. Vijay Iyer), the Berklee Bass Department Summer Workshop and Hilton Head Jazz Camp, and co-facilitated a year-long Music and Justice working group at Boston’s Nashua St. Jail as part of the Harvard-Radcliffe Prison Studies Project. She has also designed and led educational workshop series surrounding music and social justice at the Edward Said Conservatory (Palestine), Mongolian Young Scholars Program, Mannheim Public Library (Germany), and Atlanta Public Schools.

As a researcher, she has worked as a curatorial assistant since 2021 for the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice on their New Standards project, a multi-disciplinary gallery exhibit that has toured in Detroit and Boston. Working directly under Terri Lyne Carrington, she also assisted in the development of the first annual Jazz Music Awards, and creation of the new Alternative Jazz GRAMMY Award category. In summer 2022, she became the Nap Ministry’s first-ever intern, working directly with Nap Bishop Tricia Hersey. As part of her honors thesis for the Harvard Anthropology Department during summer 2023, she developed the SOL, or Sounds of Liberation Collective, a community-engaged initiative to provide commissions and build community among other non-male-identifying peers in the Boston jazz/creative music scene.