<< Jeanne Newhall

Profile: Jeanne Newhall

Jeanne Newhall is a true contemporary artist. Not confined by genres, she’s a vocalist, composer, producer and pianist who celebrates a passion for jazz and an R&B heart. Classically trained, she grew up with Mozart, Bartok and Bach as well as rock ‘n’ roll, folk and pop. She confesses to a “fetish” for guitars, describes the piano as a percussive instrument and claims D-flat as her favorite note. Many streams run through Jeanne Newhall’s music. Live or on disc, her warm, richly nuanced vocals, the free flow of her sophisticated playing and arrangements, and her pure heart and soul draw the listener into a very special world.

WILD BLUE is Jeanne Newhall’s debut on Blix Street Records. Much anticipated, the album is not only a showcase for her versatility as an artist, it signals new directions in her music. “For me—whether I’m singing or playing or composing—music is about life. It’s about living up to my full potential as an artist. It’s about evolution. I don’t know whether I’ve taken a hard right or hard left on WILD BLUE,” she laughs, “but I’ve found a new freedom with this album.”

The album opens with Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” (“I couldn’t resist that song. It got under my skin,” says Newhall. “There’s so much love in it”) and closes with “These Foolish Things.” “It’s the kiss at the end,” she says. Her show-stopping interpretation of the Boss’ song and fresh take on the Marvell & Strachey jazz standard bookend a collection of ten songs—seven composed by Newhall—that shines new light on the mysteries of life and love, heart, body and soul. “Wild Blue,” the album’s sometimes dreamy, sometimes introspective title track, was written by Nashville-based Grammy®-winner Marcus Hummon. Newhall describes her flirty, sensuous composition “Fallin’ Into You” as “the most different song on the album. It feeds my R&B side.” Among the other selections are the evocative “This Kind of Life,” a song she calls “a personal testimony,” which she ends with a Sanskrit prayer reflective of her longtime practice of Ashtanga yoga, and “Ancient,” an intimate, contemplative composition. “I think ‘Ancient’ is the soul of this album,” she says. “I think this song really is ancient. It feels like a dream to me, and I think life is a dream. It came in and said ‘here.”

Newhall produced and arranged WILD BLUE, and she also assembled an amazing cast of musicians to fill in the notes. She calls them “my musical family.” It’s a family that includes drummers John Robinson, Jr. and Dom Moio, guitarists Matt McKenzie and Mike Miller, violinist Charlie Bisharat and percussionist Brad Dutz. Credits among these family members range from Quincy Jones, Lionel Richie, Ray Charles, Maynard Ferguson and David Benoit to Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Rickie Lee Jones, Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton and Madonna.

Jeanne Newhall’s life has always been filled with music. Raised on a farm in the shadows of the Sierra Estrella Mountains west of Phoenix, she grew up watching sunsets in the Arizona
sky. Her parents loved music. One day, they bought a piano, and free music lessons were
included in the purchase price. A six-year-old Jeanne could barely reach the keys, but by the time she was 14, she made her professional debut. Before she was 16, she had graduated high school, mastered six Mozart concertos and moved east to New York City to study piano with Nadia Reisenberg. Turning aside offers from the prestigious Juilliard, Eastman and Curtis Institutes, the teenager opted to continue her piano studies with the acclaimed Abbey Simon at Indiana University. Ultimately, she earned a degree in performance from Arizona State University.

“I discovered jazz in college,” she recounts. “I was hanging out with a group of music students who loved jazz. One day, one of them said to me, ‘You have to hear Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage. Listen to the piano.’” The connection was immediate, she recounts: “A whole new world of possibilities that weren’t limited by the boundaries of classical music suddenly opened up for me—melodies, voicings, improvisation. I almost left school then and there.”

She didn’t leave school, and she didn’t stop her studies, but she definitely altered her course. What Newhall did do was listen to all the jazz greats, old and new, that she could get her hands on. She listened to R&B, which she had loved since grade school. With school choruses and church choirs now long behind her, she began to explore the possibilities of her voice as an instrument. Living in Phoenix and determined to make a career making her own kind of music, she found a voice teacher. “It took me seven lessons before I could open my mouth in the company of friends,” she recalls.

In the years since, Jeanne Newhall’s unique ways with the piano and unforgettable voice have considerably widened that circle of friends. Prior to her Blix Street debut, she recorded 13 albums, each a reflection of her many-sided life and musical prism. Among that Baker’s Dozen are five CDs that comprise “The Piano Street Series,” which includes discs celebrating the rich musical heritage of France (PARIS NIGHTS), American ragtime (CAKEWALK) and the works of Dvorak, Saint-Saens and Chopin (ESTHER A CLASSICAL PIANO TRIBUTE). Her BEDOUIN’S PARADISE CD featured “Race Thru The Clouds,” a collaboration with guitarist Peter White that earned considerable airplay in England as well as appearances with that smooth-jazz legend at venues such as the Pizza Express in London’s Soho (she also played London’s famed Pizza on the Park with trio earlier this year). Other Newhall recordings include BEAUTIFUL, FOR NO ONE TO SEE (Christmas and Wintersongs) and, most recently, E’SENSUAL.

Closer to home, the now L.A.-based Newhall has filled her concert book with club and festival performances that have taken her from West Coast to East, and her recordings have earned airplay on hundreds of radio stations throughout Europe, Canada and across the U.S. She’s been a Steinway & Sons Piano Artist since 1998, and Hal Leonard has published Jeanne Newhall Piano Solos, a 70-page book featuring 13 of her original songs.

With WILD BLUE, she begins a new chapter in a creative continuing musical journey. And whether she takes “a hard right or a hard left” along that road, Jeanne Newhall’s innate talent guarantees directions that will satisfy the heart.

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