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Jennifer Lee

Nine years is a long time between albums, but Jennifer Lee has been busy taking her music into rarely explored emotional terrain. My Shining Hour, the third album by the esteemed Bay Area jazz vocalist, guitarist, and pianist, reintroduces an artist long known as a gifted interpreter of the American and Brazilian Songbooks. But with her ensemble the Ever-Expanding Universe and a stellar cast of special guests, including trumpet legend Randy Brecker, bass master Bob Magnusson, Grammy Award-winning violinist Mads Tolling, and percussion maestro John Santos, Lee has emerged as a songwriter with an unusual gift for evoking uncanny experiences, hard-won wisdom, unbridled joy, and liminal states of consciousness.

Her evolution from her former creative identity as an arranger/interpreter to her present calling as a composer took Lee by surprise. “I always wrote a little bit, but I certainly never thought of myself as a songwriter,” she says. “Then a shift happened and all this music started channeling in. It’s like some crazy, overactive muse attached itself to me.”

While My Shining Hour marks a sea change for Lee, she’s still swimming with longtime collaborators, which is one reason why her music sounds so finely wrought and fully formed. Like on her previous, critically-hailed albums, 2003’s Jaywalkin’ and 2009’s Quiet Joy (both on Peter Sprague’s label SBE Records), Lee draws on two deep pools of talent from San Diego and the Bay Area. The line of continuity runs through Peter Sprague, the brilliant San Diego guitarist known for his extensive work with Chick Corea, Charles McPherson, and Hubert Laws. For Lee, the collaboration has provided, among many other things, an education. “Peter is an extraordinary musician and a deeply soulful player,” she says. “Working with him over the years, watching how he’ll reharmonize or phrase a line, I’ve learned so much. It’s definitely influenced my writing.”

While she continues to perform as Jennifer Lee, the artist’s full name is Jennifer Lee Sevison, which is how she publishes and copyrights her songs to avoid confusion with other musicians recording as Jennifer Lee. Born in Redwood City, California, on August 6, 1964, and raised in Menlo Park, Lee attended Woodside High School, but in her senior year she transferred to Menlo-Atherton High as a pianist to take advantage of the school’s respected jazz program.

She continued her jazz piano studies at Foothill College, often accompanying vocalists, all the while nursing her secret desire to sing. She didn’t take the plunge until an early, unwanted glimpse at mortality radically changed her priorities in the late 1980s, when she dropped out of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst to tend to her stricken father.

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186
Album Review

Jennifer Lee: Quiet Joy

Read "Quiet Joy" reviewed by Edward Blanco


The field of female jazz vocalists continues to swell with a plethora of new material overflowing the market as productions continue to be released daily. Against this backdrop lies a select number of extraordinarily superb recordings, such as Jennifer Lee's Quiet Joy which, clearly belong in the top echelon of today's jazz vocals. To emphasize the point that Lee is no ordinary vocalist, the San Francisco Bay Area resident not only provides--as Lee Hildenbrand of the San Francisco ...

233
Album Review

Jennifer Lee: J-Walkin'

Read "J-Walkin'" reviewed by Michael P. Gladstone


From the first note of this debut album, one can't help but be smitten with the charm and delivery of this San Francisco-based singer. I would expect that such an effort would be worthy of a jazz chanteuse on the order of Susannah McCorkle or another San Fran singer, Weslia Whitfield. The album was produced by guitarist Peter Sprague, a personal favorite during the late '70s and '80s. I wasn't surprised to find seven Sprague albums in my collection on ...

136
Album Review

Jennifer Lee: J-Walkin'

Read "J-Walkin'" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Listen. What grabs you about Jennifer Lee's artistic approach is her self-assured genuineness. The vocalist's debut CD, J-Walkin' leaves a strong impression of lack of pretense--what you're hearing is the real Jennifer Lee. And in a female jazz vocalist in a field packed with talent, Ms. Lee is the real thing. Her complete vocal control is part of her appeal; a control that doesn't lend a constrainted or stiff feeling to her music, but rather gives it the ...

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Recording

"My Shining Hour," New CD By San Francisco Bay Area Vocalist Jennifer Lee, Set For Release By SBE Records On August 10

"My Shining Hour," New CD By San Francisco Bay Area Vocalist Jennifer Lee, Set For Release By SBE Records On August 10

Source: Terri Hinte Publicity

With her first two albums, Oakland-based vocalist Jennifer Lee established herself as a gifted interpreter of the American and Brazilian Songbooks, producing a critically hailed body of work. On her new CD, My Shining Hour, Lee emerges as a composer who, in the nine years since her last release, has developed a striking repertoire exploring the human condition with humor, compassion, and imagination. “I always wrote a little bit,” says Lee, “but I certainly never thought of myself as a ...

“What grabs you about Jennifer Lee's artistic approach is her self-assured genuineness.” Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz

“There are flocks of jazz singers active in North America and elsewhere, but only a rare few possess the artistic gift enabling them to go beyond matter-of-fact entertainment and make the listener feel a mind and a heart at work. San Francisco Bay Area resident Jennifer Lee is such a singer." Frank Hadley, Downbeat Magazine

“Lee's enunciation is diamond-clear, whether rendering Cole Porter's English or Antonio Carlos Jobim's Portuguese.” Lee Hildebrand, San Francisco Bay Guardian

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Primary Instrument

Vocals

Location

Oakland

Willing to teach

Beginner to advanced

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