Janice Friedman

“I just want to be true to what I really hear and who I am.  I don’t want to be an actress singing a song.  I don’t want to be a singer trying to be a Jazz singer.  I want to find myself in the songs that I sing and be musical first and foremost.”-- Janice Friedman

With her 2006 release, Swingin’ for the Ride (Janika Muzik),  pianist/vocalist Janice Friedman finds herself –first and foremost—as a jazz musician with plenty to say, both with the keyboard and now with her voice, as an interpreter and composer. With accolades accumulating for her third recording, Friedman brings her trio to Sweet Rhythm in Manhattan for one night, Wednesday, November 26th. This gig is guaranteed to get your holidays off to a swinging start!

Born in The Bronx and raised in Livingston, NJ, Janice Friedman seemed destined for a career in music and specifically piano. Her mother was a talented pianist, and the Friedman home was frequently filled with the music of Errol Garner, Oscar Peterson, Marian McPartland, Bill Evans and Ahmad Jamal.  Notes Janice, “I remember hanging out under the piano when my Mom was playing.” She was playing the organ when her feet could barely reach the pedals, and before she started kindergarten, Janice was studying piano with her mother’s teacher, learning a large repertoire of songs from the fake books and family albums. In elementary school, she was often called upon to play for various school events, and by fifth grade had begun serious classical piano studies. A few years later, she was seriously studying jazz piano—and teaching her first students and playing her first paying gigs—private parties, demo recordings, a rock band.

But whatever she was playing, she always knew jazz was where she belonged. “All along, from the moment I started playing piano at around age 4, I fancied myself a jazz pianist,” she recalls. “When I was really young I didn’t quite know what that was, but I knew I was into something great and, while I still loved to play all the pop tunes of my day and worked hard on my classical stuff, I had this other thing that was different from what my friends knew.  I was playing “Watermelon Man” and “The Shadow of Your Smile” before there were two numbers in my age and I don’t know how I got it in my head, but I knew I was a jazz pianist.”

After earning a degree in jazz studies at Indiana University, Janice moved to Brooklyn, played gigs at Arthur’s Tavern and then toured with the Woody Herman Orchestra for six months before relocating to Edgewater, NJ where she spent the late 80s and early 90s gigging around area clubs. Finally in 1995, Janice moved to Manhattan. Noting that she feels successful as “my bills are paid, I’m still passionate about music…”, Janice maintains a busy schedule with “solo and ensemble gigs, accompanying vocalists (and now being one myself), arranging for myself and others, doing copy work, composing and teaching.” Over her 30+-year career, she has appeared at Carnegie Hall and Town Hall in New York as well as at a long list of Manhattan’s famed jazz clubs; at jazz festivals including JVC New York, Women’s Jazz in Portugal, and the recent International Women in Jazz Festival in Manhattan; she has performed or recorded with a Who’s Who in jazz, including Billy Higgins, Benny Golson, Joe Lovano, Milt Hinton, Marian McPartland, Kenny Burrell, Slide Hampton, Cab Calloway, Clark Terry and more; and has been on the music faculty of Rutgers University since 1991.

Janice was named New Artist to Watch on 72 Clear Channel websites and won an international song writing competition sponsored by the Salt Queen Foundation. Among her television and radio appearances, Janice performed solos and duets with Marian McPartland on NPR’s Piano Jazz. Praising Friedman’s keyboard prowess, NY Times jazz critic, John Wilson, wrote that her “explosive … piano playing carries the aura and variety of a big band.”   Last winter, Judi Silvano released the acclaimed Women’s Work, featuring Janice on piano. The Womens’ Work Quartet has since appeared at Sweet Rhythm and other venues, and was highlighted at the recent Jazz Improv Live! conference in New York.

Swingin’ for the Ride is Janice’s third recording, following Tryptych: A Trio of Trios (Janika Muzik) and Finger Paintings, her quartet with Claudio Roditi (Jazz Mania). But the new CD features Janice’s vocals as well as piano, the first time she has recorded as a singer. “I really started singing out regularly a few years ago,” she said, “and even then only on certain jobs.  For the most part, I had been called as a side person to play the piano.  On my solo jobs, I’d sneak it in.” Although she identifies her admiration for Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Wilson, Dinah Washington, Mose Allison, Joni Mitchell and more, Janice notes that “I don’t think I have really tried to sound like anyone vocally because I wasn’t studying it seriously-- just playing around singing in my own living room for my own specific reasons of practicing music. Once I realized that I might actually do this for other people to hear, I think I just tried to make a pretty sound with my voice and be true to the kind of phrasing that I hear from my piano playing.” 

Swingin’ for the Ride follows the great traditions of straight-ahead piano trios, the legacy of Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Marian McPartland, with the added (and well integrated) attraction of first-rate vocals, in much the manner of such pianist/vocalists as Nat King Cole, Shirley Horn, Diana Krall and Karrin Allyson. Presenting five original compositions (one co-written with husband David Praeger) and seven evocative covers (all arranged by Janice), the CD truly swings from first note to last. As with her keyboard improvisations, Janice knows how to sell a lyric through alterations in dynamics, rhythm, and phrasing; she proves to be adept at scat as well although she more often relies on more subtle experiments. [Click here for a Jazz Police review!]

It’s a little unnerving that this is only Janice Friedman’s third recording leading her own band and only her first significant statement as a vocalist. This is a musician with chops to burn on two instruments—piano and voice, with a deep well of compositional and well as improvisational ideas, many muses but a very individual style. With cohorts Bill Moring on bass and Tim Horner on drums, Janice will take you on a “swingin’ ride” at Sweet Rhythm on Wednesday night, November 26th.  Expect the playlist to include tunes from Swingin’ for the Ride as well as some from previous recordings and some that will preview Janice’s upcoming fourth recording. Also expect a special appearance by vocalist Suede, with whom Janice has been collaborating on a new recording. “Here at Sweet Rhythm you'll get a sneak peak at why I love working with her,” says Janice. “And, on top of all that, as if that is not enough, we may be honored by having Bill Moring's son, Adrian, a young and most talented bass player, joining us for a tune on the early set.  (It's a school night after all).  We'll see what happens.”

Sweet Rhythm is located at 88 7th Ave and Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village; www.sweetrhythm.com. Sets at 8 and 10 pm, $15 cover.