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Jenna McSwain

Music is the vehicle that’s been driving Jenna McSwain’s whole life. It picked her up before she could even talk and drove her at the age of four to get out from behind the pew of her Charleston church and share her songs with the congregation. It drove her to lead her three sisters to perform spirituals throughout the South Carolina lowcountry and to study hard. By the time she was attending high school at the Charleston County School of the Arts, she was playing piano and singing professionally in esteemed Charleston music venues. And the music kept driving – a trusty, yet relentless old carriage with a strong engine and faulty brakes. Jenna was certain that if she took the wheel, through music, she would find her path to a meaningful life.

She drove hard to educate herself, earning a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of South Carolina and a Masters from the University of Northern Colorado. She had been smitten with jazz music since she met Ahmad Jamal at the age of eight, and she made it her focus, while also studying classical piano, voice, and Portuguese, the language of her Azorean ancestors and of the Brazilian music she loved. In addition to providing instruction with great educators, her schooling offered opportunities in performance, classroom teaching and administrative duties. She graduated filled with song, fired up about teaching, and with a network of colleagues in the national jazz community.

With a newfound “license,” Jenna took her music back down South, where she taught on the jazz faculty at the University of South Carolina, acquired a large studio of piano and voice students, and composed, arranged, and performed locally. One year later, the music brought her to New Orleans to soak up the big, beautiful beat that fuels the second lines and keeps everyone dancing. In New Orleans, she crafted her debut album, Wax & Wane: Songs Without Seasons. With her writing, Jenna pays tribute to her southern roots with songs like “The Okra Strut,” named after the festival in Irmo, South Carolina, and “I’ve Got Peace Like a River,” a spiritual song she grew up singing. With her original lyrics, she uses the seasons as symbols of loss and gain, suffering and rejuvenation. Her compositions deal with the inevitable changes that occur with the passing of time, the personal growth that accompanies those changes, and the realization that amidst all these transient things, love is perennial. The album is produced by Jenna, along with Scott Myers (leader of Chegadão, Os Batutas and Organica, and student of guitarist/producers Steve Masakowski and Brian Seeger) and features some of New Orleans’ great young musicians: Myers on guitar and percussion, Nick Solnick on drum set and percussion, Gary Washington on bass and cello, Russell Ramirez on trombone, Bryce Eastwood on tenor saxophone, and Steve Lands on trumpet. The album is eclectic, organic, and undoubtedly jazz, moving smoothly from sambas to hard-driving swing tunes with heartfelt ballads interspersed. It is currently available on iTunes and CDbaby.com and will be officially released mid-October.

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Album Review

Louise Cappi: Mélange

Read "Mélange" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Vocalist Louise Cappi's recording Mélange is a musical collection of short stories, each cast as uniquely and differently as if they were written by a Mario Vargas Llosa or Gabriel García Márquez. Each selection is carefully curated, right down to the production, to achieve a given end. The title is apt as each of these songs differ from the other, some greatly and some not so much. It makes for a rich listening experience and a celebration of American music ...

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"The music feels alive, dynamic and real."

"As with her confident vocals, Jenna's piano reveals a player whose approach to the keyboard has a surety of movement, a definite purpose and place for each note struck...she delivers solid, clear, confident notes like those expected of an accomplished player twenty years her senior." -Andy Burke, co-founder of VIP Productions and author of West Indigo Blues and Three Brothers

“Jenna is a natural talent with a captivating on-stage presence. In both her voice and piano, she has a technical mastery and expression that blend to create satisfying, emotion-filled experiences for a range of audiences." -Robert Percival, Owner, Blue Martini Jazz Club

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Mélange

Self Produced
2020

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Wax and Wane: Songs...

Unknown label
2013

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