The Both Sides of Joni project was the product of a period of soul searching during the Covid Summer of 2020. Vocalist Janiece Jaffe started listening closely to Joni Mitchell's music and lyrics with her jazz vocalist ears and found truth and wisdom that inspired her and that she wanted to share with the world to inspire others. She studied the words more deeply and got the urge to re-imagine them in jazz arrangements. "I could almost 'Hear' them!" Together with friend and collaborator Monika Herzig, they spent many summer days of 2020 in the barn with keyboard and masks working out arrangements and rediscovering Joni's music. In March 2021, the arrangements were premiered at the Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis to most enthusiastic response. Many audience members came together for the first time in over a year and the messages of overcoming challenges, endurance, rebellion, love, and regret rang deep. They decided to record the music with a group of outstanding musicians and with community support from a successful Kickstarter Campaign. Just days after the completion of the Master Recording, Janiece left this world unexpectedly after heart surgery. This album is her legacy and her dream and we are grateful for her musical gift to us to be celebrated throughout 2023 with extensive tours in the US and Europe featuring renowned New York vocalist Alexis Cole.
From the Liner Notes:
This album is, first and foremost, about relationships: between Janiece and Monika; between the stretch of time that gave rise to Joni’s songs and the ones we’re living through now; and, most of all, between Janiece and these lyrics. She sings them in a pure and transparent voice, sometimes overdubbing the harmonies she once only imagined, and she moves through a variety of moods: reflective on “Both Sides Now”; startlingly direct on “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow”; with swinging aplomb on “My Old Man”; longingly, on “River,” her yearning teased out by Dutton’s violin; and, in the middle of “The Hissing of Summer Lawns,” seizing upon the word “darkness,” and then sings wordlessly, in the improvisational style she studied with Bobby McFerrin and Rhiannon, a master teacher, and leading the ensemble into freer terrain. She’s “hanging out with the jazzers,” just like she used to, just like Joni so famously and brilliantly did. And she’s revealing both sides of herself—the girl who heard Joni’s songs and wanted to make them her own, and the woman who now leans on them to, like the rest of us, try to make sense of it all. ~ Larry Blumenfeld
Janiece Jaffe grew up in a musical family. Her mother was a preschool teacher and an opera singer and her father was a professor of classical music. As a child her parents facilitated 'Opera Nights' where singing was the mode of conversation at the dinner table!
As a performer, Janiece has worked in collaboration with many great artists, including Freddie Hubbard, Frank Vignola, Keter Betts, Dominic Spera and Al Cobine. She is featured in Scott Yanow's Jazz Singer: The Ultimate Guide.
The vocalist has recorded 11 albums and can be heard as a guest on more than 25 other recordings. During her career Janiece has written lyrics to the music of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Freddie Hubbard. She has also been a lyricist with composers Marcos Cavalcante (Standing on the Edge), Monika Herzig, David Ward Steinman and Curtis Cantwell Jackson.
Janiece became a Reiki Master practitioner in 1999 and began exploring Sound Healing. She created three meditation CDs: The Lotus and the Rose, Heartones, and Fire in the Lotus. Janiece produced companion music for the book The Atlantean Legacy by Paula Bates with harpist Amy Camie. She also collaborated with Amy Camie in St. Louis on Soundscape Concerts, one of which was produced as a CD called Beyond Words Into the Soul.
On November 23, 2022 in the early morning as Janiece was preparing for heart surgery she wrote and sent out these last words: “After finishing my morning prayer and feeling all of your love and support I am ready for what comes next! I want to let you know how much gratitude I feel for everyone’s songs and prayers and chanting and healing energy and love coming at me. May It come back to you all tenfold! Thank you so much! I’m ready! Love, Janiece”
The Mayor of Bloomington, Indiana declared December 12 Janiece Jaffe Day.
Monika Herzig’s career as a jazz pianist/composer spans three decades and dozens of releases, most recently with her all-star group Sheroes featuring the world’s leading female instrumentalists including Jamie Baum, Reut Regev, Leni Stern, Rosa Avila, Jennifer Vincent with guests Ingrid Jensen, Ada Rovatti, Akua Dixon, Lakecia Benjamin, and more. Her composition “Just Another Day in the Office“ is featured in the recent publication New Standards: 101 Lead Sheets by Women Composers (Berklee Press, 2022) compiled under the direction of Terri Lyne Carrington.
Monika is a DownBeat and JazzTimes contributor and served as the editor of Jazz Education in Research and Practice (JAZZ) as well as board member and head of the research committee for the Jazz Education Network (JEN). In 2019, Sheroes played the Jazz Tales Festival in Cairo & Alexandria, Egypt and toured many of Europe’s premiere jazz clubs, such as, Porgy & Bess (Vienna), Unterfahrt (Munich), Theaterhaus Stuttgart Jazztage, the Women in Jazz Festival (Halle) and also can be seen in Kay D. Ray’s documentary In Her Hands: Key Changes in Jazz, alongside their sister contemporary jazz stars, Anat Cohen, Ingrid Jensen, Sherrie Maricle, Grace Kelly among others. Groups under Herzig’s leadership have toured Germany, Italy, Japan and opened for acts such as Tower of Power, Sting and the Dixie Dregs. Herzig is the author of two critically acclaimed books; one with a brilliant forward by Quincy Jones: David Baker: A Legacy in Music (IU Press, 2011) and Chick Corea: A Listener’s Companion (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), which the Darmstadt Jazz Institute attests, “Herzig manages a perfect balance of musical analysis and context for the chosen recordings as well as Chick Corea’s career...easy to read, well-organized and motivates–which is still the highest achievement for music literature–for repeated listening.” Her co-edited volume Jazz and Gender was released in 2022 on Routledge. Since 2020, she is the host of the radio series and podcast Talking Jazz. Currently she serves as Professor of Artistic Research and Dean of Music Education at the Jam Music Lab University in Vienna, Austria.
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