It has not taken Jane Monheit long to become the most talked-about new singer in jazz. Riding the strength and the popularity of Never Never Land, her debut disc for N-Coded Music, Monheit has won raves from the likes of The New York Times' Stephen Holden (“charismatic”) and The Los Angeles Times' Don Heckman (“she sings like a singer with decades of experience”), as well as an audience of already worldwide proportion.
“It's so exciting going somewhere I've never been before,” Monheit says of many stops on the RISING STARS Jazz Circuit, her European debut tour, “with no idea of whether people will even show up for the gig, only to find the club packed with people who know who I am.” Even more people are bound to discover who Jane Monheit is after hearing her second N-Coded disc, Come Dream With Me. The album features eleven songs that the singer inhabits in the exalted company of Kenny Barron, Christian McBride, Greg Hutchinson, and special guests Tom Harrell, Michael Brecker and Richard Bona.
“There was a big difference in making the two albums,” Monheit explains. “I was learning as I went along on Never Never Land, and was so honored just to be in the presence of great musicians like Kenny, Ron Carter, Bucky Pizzarelli, Lewis Nash, David Newman and Hank Crawford. This time I was on a different level with the band and could be more of a leader, because the musicians were closer to my age, especially Christian and Greg. The first album just happened magically. This one was more of a creative process.”
Learning as she goes is something that Monheit has understood all her life. “I started singing as soon as I could talk,” she says, “and basically learned how to do both at once. Performing was also something I always knew I wanted to do. As far back as I can remember I was writing, producing and directing my own shows for anybody who would watch, playing piano and clarinet and performing original plays with my brother. At my elementary school, where the choir was supposed to be for fourth grade and older, they opened it up for me when I was in third grade, and when I got my first solo, on ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’ at my town's tree-lighting ceremony, that was it.”
Her feeling for jazz surfaced at around the same time. “I was always the kid teachers yelled at to stop improvising, whether I was playing clarinet in the band or singing,” she laughs. “In elementary school, the teacher in the intensive music program was a great jazz drummer who gave us jazz lessons as part of the curriculum - that's how I learned to solo on the blues. I was lucky to acquire so much knowledge before college.” Monheit's years at the Manhattan School of Music were critical, thanks to her teacher Peter Eldridge (an original founding member of New York Voices). Before I studied with Peter, she admits, “I sang with an attitude of constantly proving everything I knew, so I was being overly technical and ignoring the lyric in favor of the harmonies. Peter stressed paring it down and making musical choices in light of what the lyric was saying. I'm a much better singer because of him - in terms of making a song mean something.”
Just how much Monheit had under her command while still an undergraduate became clear in the fall of 1998, when she placed second in the Thelonious Monk Institute International Vocal Competition. (The winner, the late Teri Thornton, was more than three times older.) “Peter had recommended that I enter,” Monheit recalls, “and my attitude initially was `I've got nothing to do this weekend, so I'll make a demo tape.' When I got there, though, it was my first exposure to the real music business, with swarms of press and record people, and big stars everywhere I looked. I thought it was pretty glamorous and exciting; and that's where I met my manager Mary Ann Topper, and Carl Griffin, president of N-Coded Music. They were just completely supportive from the semifinals on.”
Rather than rush into a professional career, Monheit completed her studies at the Manhattan School of Music. Then she set about touring, as well as recording her debut CD Never Never Land with ace producer Joel Dorn. Their approach to recording has once again proved winning. “I know so many songs that I just run through my personal files,” Monheit explains when asked about her current choices. “I just made lists and lists, and then ran through them with Joel.” The process has yielded a set where gems from several decades are in congenial balance, with Monheit and the trio joined by Harrell's trumpet and Brecker's tenor sax on several tracks, plus a pair of more intimate performances where the singer shares the spotlight with Barron's piano (on “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most”) and Bona's guitar and fretless bass (on “A Case of You”).
“Most of the new album features songs I've been performing,” Monheit notes.
“'A Case of You' was even something I included in my senior recital, although then it was a duet with piano. But I also picked a few things I had only sung around the house like 'So Many Stars,' where I knew the melody and not the words.”
Monheit's version of “Over the Rainbow,” complete with the rarely heard verse (as she learned it from Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook), has a special place on her many lists. “That's the first song I ever learned,” she confirms. It's incredibly sentimental, for me and my family, almost too special to record. I wanted to save it, but then I sang it live at an Ella Fitzgerald tribute concert and decided, ‘What better time than now?’
All of the tracks on Come Dream With Me reveal a singer who continues to grow. “My voice is probably just getting to the point of full maturity,” Monheit says. “Even in the couple of months since the album was finished, I notice things I do that are further along on the evolutionary path. I'm looking forward to the time when I can grow steadily with my own band, because that was one of the greatest things about the European tour - to try new things with musicians who are really interested and are with you night after night. But the chance to do different projects as a guest artist has also been great. I've really enjoyed concerts like the Arthur Schwartz tribute at Alice Tully Hall, and the Artists for the Cure fundraiser for breast cancer with all different kinds of artists.”
“I have another fundraiser coming up in London with Roger Daltry, Elton John and Chrissie Hynde; and I'll be performing with the Boston Pops and Terence Blanchard. I can't wait to go back to the Village Vanguard; and the two weeks at the Algonquin were also major, presenting the music in a cabaret setting so that the entire performance told a story, while still singing the tunes my way.”
Jane Monheit's way has won her an amazing number of friends in a brief time, a situation she views without any trace of the diva. “I'm smart enough to realize that much of my success is due to the talented people I'm working with, on the business end and the bandstand,” she notes. “I'm just singing the most beautiful songs I know in the most sincere way. I think people are responding to the beauty of the music, and to my attempt to tell the truth.”