While The Syncopated Times this year celebrates its fifth anniversary, Jane Monheit marks her 20th year as a professional jazz singer with the release of her 12th album Come What May on Club44, a label founded in 2019 that features jazz and Broadway singers.
Both music critics and fans raved about Monheit after the release of her first album Never Never Land (N-Coded) in 2000. The album of ten jazz classics, called a “stunning debut,” paired the new talent with heavyweight jazz veterans Bucky Pizzarelli, Ron Carter, Kenny Barron and Hank Crawford. Monheit obtain the recording contract, which yielded a total of four albums, after winning 2nd place in 1998’s prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz vocal competition. Monheit—at age 21—lost first place to the late, great Teri Thornton who had been performing since the 1950s.
Monheit spoke with The Syncopated Times by telephone from her home in Los Angeles where she and her family were riding out the COVID-19 pandemic that saw the cancellation of all in-person live music concerts. Taking a break from helping her son build his science fair project, Monheit recalled those early records and learning from her more seasoned sidemen.
“It was a huge learning experience,” she said. “Luckily, I was skilled enough to hang and smart enough to know that I should be listening to every word these musicians were saying. In jazz,
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