Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
At 23, Jane Monheit is a pitch-perfect poster girl for jazz. With an appealing repertoire of standards, she's gaining attention - and comparisons to another glamorous singer.
By PHILIP BOOTH
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 18, 2001
Jane Monheit, by many accounts, is this season's Next Big Thing in jazz. She's certainly the jazz sensation of the year: Her second CD, Come Dream With Me, topped the Billboard jazz chart immediately upon its release in June. Both that album and its predecessor, Never Never Land, have scored serious airplay and fawning reviews.
The appeal of the singer, a vivacious 23-year-old from Long Island, N.Y., isn't that tough to figure out. Monheit is a glamor girl: She's gifted with beauty, charm and a graceful stage presence.
And there's that voice, clear as a bell, and serious technical chops, as she demonstrated in an enthusiastically received performance at the Montreal Jazz Festival in July.
She's not yet much of an interpreter, but she knows how to nail those notes. Every time.
The singer, too, with a little help from various producers and managers, has managed to wrap herself in an appealing, non-threatening package, not dissimilar to the one offered by Diana Krall. Monheit, for the most part, sticks to vintage jazz and pop standards.
In Montreal, backed by a blue-chip group including pianist Kenny Werner and saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman, Monheit opened with They Can't Take That Away From Me, continued with pieces such as More Than You Know, I'll Be Seeing You, Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most and concluded with a dreamy, melancholy Over the Rainbow.
Her choice of material might be viewed by naysayers as a cynical attempt to nail a particular market -- i.e., the same folks drawn to Krall, Harry Connick, or even Tony Bennett. Not so, she insists.
"I really have always wanted to just make very, just simple beautiful music," Monheit said, seated on a couch in the airy lobby of the Montreal Wyndham hotel. The singer, wearing a sun dress and less makeup than onstage, comes off as relaxed, if a bit cautious, and her speaking voice is surprisingly girlish.
"I've studied music my entire life, and I kind of went through all the phases of getting all intellectual about everything, all those sorts of things," she said. "At this point I just really enjoy keeping it simple and really communicating with people. And I think the kind of people who listen to my music appreciate that."
Monheit, who lives on the Upper West Side of New York with her fiance, Rick Montalbano, also the drummer in her touring band, was born with perfect pitch to a family of musicians. At the age of 3, she sang Over the Rainbow for her grandfather, who eventually culled hours of home recordings of his granddaughter.
In high school, she took lead roles in a variety of musicals. At the Manhattan School of Music, she studied with Peter Eldridge, co-founder of New York Voices. Monheit was the first runner-up to the late Teri Thornton in the 1998 Thelonious Monk Vocal Competition.
There, she gained some careermaking attention, signing management and recording contracts. In addition to her own discs, she was heard this year on trumpeter Terence Blanchard's Let's Get Lost: The Songs of Jimmy McHugh, a ballads collection that paired the trumpeter with Monheit, Krall, Cassandra Wilson and Dianne Reeves.
Monheit has often spoken about the influence on her singing of jazz diva Ella Fitzgerald and pop-folk star Joni Mitchell. "It was just her ability to sound so incredibly pure and natural," she said about the former. And regarding Mitchell, whose album Blue was played to an in utero Monheit: "Her ability to express certain emotions through her writing is just unparalleled."
Still, the comparison listeners and critics alike most often point to is that between Monheit and Krall. It hasn't helped much that Krall's repertoire includes a cover of Mitchell's A Case of You; the same tune appears on Monheit's new CD.
"We both love a certain kind of repertoire, and I think that's really the strongest similarity between us," Monheit said. "But I think she's just an incredible musician and I love the way she sings. It's very flattering to me when I'm compared with her.
"I think Diana Krall -- it's amazing what she's done. She's gone out and created a huge audience for singers, and she's universally loved by the public and it's such a beautiful thing. It's so exciting to see that. I'm so excited to see what's happening in the world for singers right now. It's getting better and better."