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SINGER JAN SHAPIRO
RELEASES SELF-PRODUCED “BACK TO BASICS”
CD MARKS WELCOME RETURN TO RECORDING
FOR LONGTIME VOCAL CHAIR
AT BERKLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC
Singer Jan Shapiro has been a mainstay in voice education at Boston’s Berklee College of Music for more than 20 years. Since 1997, when she became department chair, she has overseen the dramatic expansion of vocal studies at Berklee and had the satisfaction of building what is now the premier contemporary voice department in the country. But her academic and administrative responsibilities left little time for her own singing.
Last spring, Shapiro finally carved out the necessary time to plan a recording, her first since the late 90s. She tested the waters with a series of gigs in her native St. Louis, trying out material and getting her chops up. She arrived at a carefully chosen repertoire of standards by Gershwin, Ellington, and Berlin. And she enlisted several of her Berklee colleagues – Tim Ray on piano, guitarist John Baboian, bassist John Repucci, and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington – for the Boston session that resulted in her new CD Back to Basics.
The album is a marvelous showcase for Shapiro’s three-octave lyric soprano and peerless musicianship. “When I first heard my musicians run through the songs,” she says, “I actually became a little nervous; it had been such a long time since I’d been in the studio. But they were there for me, and I quickly relaxed into the music with them.” Each song was completed in one or two takes.
Prior to joining Berklee, Jan Shapiro was a life-long, full-time singer. She studied at the St. Louis Institute of Music, and completed her music degree cum laude at Howard University (in the mid-70s), but otherwise “I was on the road,” she says. “We did the hotel circuit – the Camellia Room at the Drake in Chicago, the Hyatts in Washington and Atlanta, the Marriotts and Sheratons and assorted smaller hotels. We were pretty sophisticated for a St. Louis band.”
RELEASES SELF-PRODUCED “BACK TO BASICS”
CD MARKS WELCOME RETURN TO RECORDING
FOR LONGTIME VOCAL CHAIR
AT BERKLEE COLLEGE OF MUSIC
Singer Jan Shapiro has been a mainstay in voice education at Boston’s Berklee College of Music for more than 20 years. Since 1997, when she became department chair, she has overseen the dramatic expansion of vocal studies at Berklee and had the satisfaction of building what is now the premier contemporary voice department in the country. But her academic and administrative responsibilities left little time for her own singing.
Last spring, Shapiro finally carved out the necessary time to plan a recording, her first since the late 90s. She tested the waters with a series of gigs in her native St. Louis, trying out material and getting her chops up. She arrived at a carefully chosen repertoire of standards by Gershwin, Ellington, and Berlin. And she enlisted several of her Berklee colleagues – Tim Ray on piano, guitarist John Baboian, bassist John Repucci, and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington – for the Boston session that resulted in her new CD Back to Basics.
The album is a marvelous showcase for Shapiro’s three-octave lyric soprano and peerless musicianship. “When I first heard my musicians run through the songs,” she says, “I actually became a little nervous; it had been such a long time since I’d been in the studio. But they were there for me, and I quickly relaxed into the music with them.” Each song was completed in one or two takes.
Prior to joining Berklee, Jan Shapiro was a life-long, full-time singer. She studied at the St. Louis Institute of Music, and completed her music degree cum laude at Howard University (in the mid-70s), but otherwise “I was on the road,” she says. “We did the hotel circuit – the Camellia Room at the Drake in Chicago, the Hyatts in Washington and Atlanta, the Marriotts and Sheratons and assorted smaller hotels. We were pretty sophisticated for a St. Louis band.”
Jan continued to sing full-time even after her sons were born (in 1979 and 1981), but also began to do clinics, eventually teaching voice at Southern Illinois University and St. Louis’s Fonbonne College. She took the teaching position at Berklee when her children were just entering school, realizing that “if I were to keep working nights as a singer and they had school events, I’d never be able to go to them.”
After moving to Boston, Shapiro earned a master’s in education at Cambridge College, and received an NEA grant, which she used to research early jazz singers and the Boswell Sisters. She became acting vocal chair in the summer of 1996, and by January 1997 she was appointed head of the department – the first female chairperson in Berklee’s Performance Division.
“As a teacher, my philosophy had been ‘not everyone will be a star,’” says Jan, “but there are practical things you can learn about your instrument.’ As a chair, I wanted to make sure that singers became empowered by good musicianship as well as excellent vocal craft.”
Shapiro oversaw the tripling in size of the department to 750 voice principals (only the guitar department is larger), and she derived enormous gratification from her work with the talented young singers who came through Berklee. The feeling was mutual:
“She was the one who solidified and demystified the technique of singing for me,” says background vocalist and keyboardist Adriana Balic, known for her work with pop chanteuse Pink. “I’ve had the pleasure of working with Jan Shapiro both as my teacher and as a colleague,” says Grammy nominee Tierney Sutton, “and I would like to heartily recommend her as a singer, instructor, administrator, and human being.” And Luciana Souza, also a Grammy nominee, calls Jan “a memorable teacher in my life, a role model, and one of my strongest influences.”
Now, with her sons grown and her vocal department fully launched, Jan is clear about her need to sing “because it’s a part of who I am! I like connecting with an audience through my singing. It’s not so much about the fame or the money – I sing because it’s what I’m supposed to do in this life.”
After an appearance, on April 5, at the Holmes Jazz Series at Washington University in St. Louis, and with many other bookings in the works, Jan Shapiro is entirely serious about getting back to the basics of singing.
Back to Basics
Available on CD Baby:
www.cdbaby.com/cd/janshapiro3
In producing Back to Basics, her marvelous new CD, vocalist Jan Shapiro found that the fundamental things apply:
Great songs. A simpatico rhythm section. And singing itself.
For the last 20-some years, the St. Louis, Missouri native had been doing way too little singing. Since joining the Berklee College of Music’s vocal department in 1985, her focus had been on teaching and – once she became its chair in 1997 – administrative duties. Shapiro oversaw the department’s dramatic expansion to 750 voice principals (only the guitar department is larger), and she derived enormous satisfaction from her work with the talented young singers who came through Berklee (Tierney Sutton, Luciana Souza, and Paula Cole among them).
Apart from a couple of late-1980s appearances at the Boston Globe Jazz Festival, however, and the recording of two low-profile CDs in the mid-1990s, Jan Shapiro was rarely seen or heard in performance. “I missed singing terribly,” she admits, “but I thought, ‘I can’t do it, I’m doing this right now,’” referring to her pressing academic responsibilities.
Following her father’s death two years ago, Shapiro took a sabbatical from Berklee and began to find her way back to singing – back to herself. She started getting gigs in St. Louis, her old stomping grounds, and traveled back and forth between St. Louis and Boston, holding on to those gigs and trying out material. “I felt like an old athlete,” she says, “getting in shape for the recording and working to keep it there. The business had changed; it’s hard to get back in, and there are no six-night-a-week jobs to keep up your chops.”
Part of the no-frills “basics” theme of the new CD entailed repertoire. “I wanted to do standards, songs that people knew,” Shapiro says. “I used to sing ‘S’Wonderful’ all the time 30 years ago.” In addition to that Gershwin classic, Jan chose songs like Irving Berlin’s “Change Partners” (which sets an intimate mood as the CD opener), Horace Silver’s sassy “Sister Sadie,” and Ellington’s “Just Squeeze Me” – all inspired showcases for her lustrous lyric soprano, perfect intonation, and three-octave range.
Recorded at Berklee’s Boston studios, Back to Basics features praiseworthy support from four of Jan’s school colleagues: Tim Ray on piano, guitarist John Baboian (who duets with her on “Don’t Be That Way”), bassist John Repucci, and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. Shapiro & Company completed the album one spring day last year, requiring no more than two takes per song. “I had great musicians,” she says of her accompanists. “When I first heard them run through the songs, I actually became a little nervous; it had been such a long time since I’d been in the studio. But they were there for me, and I quickly relaxed into the music with them.”
Born in St. Louis on May 10, 1949, Jan Shapiro grew up in rural Festus, 35 miles to the south. “It was a country town, with one main street,” she recalls. “You cruised down that street, then turned around. There certainly wasn’t much culture.”
Jan’s mother, though, was a talented musician who had wanted to go to music school, and from the time her eldest daughter was five, “she always had me singing and dancing.” Jan studied piano and flute, made up her own songs, taught herself guitar, played in the band, sang in school musicals.
Despite this encouragement of talent at home, the Shapiros wanted Jan to have “something to fall back on.” She attended junior college for nursing and passed the state board for registered nurse, all the while knowing she wanted to go back to school for music. When she did enroll at the St. Louis Institute of Music, she supported herself working part-time at the local hospital’s emergency room.
She also earned money singing on the weekends, and a piano player she’d met (her future husband) told her to stop by his gig at the Playboy Club. Soon she was hired to work there with him, “and that changed my life.” The singing engagement lasted six months.
“In those days you went on the road. We did the hotel circuit – the Camellia Room at the Drake in Chicago, the Hyatts in Washington and Atlanta, the Marriotts and Sheratons and assorted smaller hotels. We were pretty sophisticated for a St. Louis band.”
Shapiro wound up in Washington, DC, working the Hyatt five nights a week with a duo and returning to college in 1975 at Howard University, where she earned her music degree cum laude. “I got very traditional, classical training at Howard,” she says. “It was invaluable, but since I’d always had classical training, I sometimes wondered if too much classical training would be difficult to transfer to pop and jazz styles. As is turned out, it was! If you have a Julie Andrews type voice, as I do, how do you sing pop or jazz? It’s a different aspect of your instrument, and the timbre and delivery for singing jazz is completely different.”
While in Washington, Shapiro married her piano player, and they moved back to St. Louis to be close to their families. Jan kept singing even after their sons were born (Aaron in 1979, Adam in 1981). “I worked all the time,” she says. “I sang six and sometimes seven nights a week, and I loved it.”
Jan was invited to do clinics, eventually teaching voice at Southern Illinois University and St. Louis’s Fonbonne College. Thinking about her sons and the idea of “something to fall back on,” she welcomed the relative security of teaching. Moreover, one of her teachers encouraged her: “You’re a natural. You have something to teach.”
When a colleague at SIU called her attention to a job opening at Berklee, Jan sent in a letter “as a lark,” then was surprised when Berklee called her in for an interview. By that time she was divorced, and she needed to weigh her professional options.
At first Jan wasn’t ready to accept the job, but when the school called her back the following year with an even sweeter offer, she said yes. “It was a full-time position, and I had to think about my children,” she says now. “One of them was in kindergarten. If I were to keep working nights as a singer and they had school events, I’d never be able to go to them.”
In the fall of 1985, when she was 36, Shapiro gave up singing full-time and started working at Berklee.
While teaching, Jan also pursued a master’s at Cambridge College. She took a special interest in research and history, and in 1989 was the recipient of an NEA grant, which she used to research early jazz singers and the Boswell Sisters. Some years later, in 2000, she recorded an album of Boswell vocal arrangements (Boswellmania!) with Berklee faculty members Adriana Balic and Lisa Thorson.
Shapiro became acting vocal chair in the summer of 1996, and by January 1997 she was appointed head of the department – the first female chairperson in Berklee’s Performance Division. “I was a driven woman,” she recalls of that period. “It was right around the time my sons were going to start college. I threw myself into the job of growing and shaping the department.
“As a teacher, my philosophy had been ‘not everyone will be a star, but there are practical things you can learn about your instrument.’ As a chair, I wanted to make sure that singers became empowered by good musicianship as well as excellent vocal craft.”
Under Shapiro’s direction, Berklee’s vocal department has tripled in size and emerged as the premier contemporary voice department in the country.
Even as she was taking the helm as vocal chair, Shapiro found the time to record two albums in close proximity: Read Between the Lines (1997), a pop session, and Not Commercial (1998), with arrangements by Grammy winner Richard Evans. (In the 1970s, prior to her days at Howard University, Jan had recorded as featured guest artist with the “Airmen of Note,” the official Jazz Ensemble of the U.S. Air Force.)
Now, with her sons grown and her vocal department fully launched, Jan is clear about one thing: “I need to sing because it’s a part of who I am! I like connecting with an audience through my singing. It’s not so much about the fame or the money – I sing because it’s what I’m supposed to do in this life.”
The release of Back to Basics is a definitive step toward fulfilling that long-held goal. •
Great songs. A simpatico rhythm section. And singing itself.
For the last 20-some years, the St. Louis, Missouri native had been doing way too little singing. Since joining the Berklee College of Music’s vocal department in 1985, her focus had been on teaching and – once she became its chair in 1997 – administrative duties. Shapiro oversaw the department’s dramatic expansion to 750 voice principals (only the guitar department is larger), and she derived enormous satisfaction from her work with the talented young singers who came through Berklee (Tierney Sutton, Luciana Souza, and Paula Cole among them).
Apart from a couple of late-1980s appearances at the Boston Globe Jazz Festival, however, and the recording of two low-profile CDs in the mid-1990s, Jan Shapiro was rarely seen or heard in performance. “I missed singing terribly,” she admits, “but I thought, ‘I can’t do it, I’m doing this right now,’” referring to her pressing academic responsibilities.
Following her father’s death two years ago, Shapiro took a sabbatical from Berklee and began to find her way back to singing – back to herself. She started getting gigs in St. Louis, her old stomping grounds, and traveled back and forth between St. Louis and Boston, holding on to those gigs and trying out material. “I felt like an old athlete,” she says, “getting in shape for the recording and working to keep it there. The business had changed; it’s hard to get back in, and there are no six-night-a-week jobs to keep up your chops.”
Part of the no-frills “basics” theme of the new CD entailed repertoire. “I wanted to do standards, songs that people knew,” Shapiro says. “I used to sing ‘S’Wonderful’ all the time 30 years ago.” In addition to that Gershwin classic, Jan chose songs like Irving Berlin’s “Change Partners” (which sets an intimate mood as the CD opener), Horace Silver’s sassy “Sister Sadie,” and Ellington’s “Just Squeeze Me” – all inspired showcases for her lustrous lyric soprano, perfect intonation, and three-octave range.
Recorded at Berklee’s Boston studios, Back to Basics features praiseworthy support from four of Jan’s school colleagues: Tim Ray on piano, guitarist John Baboian (who duets with her on “Don’t Be That Way”), bassist John Repucci, and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. Shapiro & Company completed the album one spring day last year, requiring no more than two takes per song. “I had great musicians,” she says of her accompanists. “When I first heard them run through the songs, I actually became a little nervous; it had been such a long time since I’d been in the studio. But they were there for me, and I quickly relaxed into the music with them.”
Born in St. Louis on May 10, 1949, Jan Shapiro grew up in rural Festus, 35 miles to the south. “It was a country town, with one main street,” she recalls. “You cruised down that street, then turned around. There certainly wasn’t much culture.”
Jan’s mother, though, was a talented musician who had wanted to go to music school, and from the time her eldest daughter was five, “she always had me singing and dancing.” Jan studied piano and flute, made up her own songs, taught herself guitar, played in the band, sang in school musicals.
Despite this encouragement of talent at home, the Shapiros wanted Jan to have “something to fall back on.” She attended junior college for nursing and passed the state board for registered nurse, all the while knowing she wanted to go back to school for music. When she did enroll at the St. Louis Institute of Music, she supported herself working part-time at the local hospital’s emergency room.
She also earned money singing on the weekends, and a piano player she’d met (her future husband) told her to stop by his gig at the Playboy Club. Soon she was hired to work there with him, “and that changed my life.” The singing engagement lasted six months.
“In those days you went on the road. We did the hotel circuit – the Camellia Room at the Drake in Chicago, the Hyatts in Washington and Atlanta, the Marriotts and Sheratons and assorted smaller hotels. We were pretty sophisticated for a St. Louis band.”
Shapiro wound up in Washington, DC, working the Hyatt five nights a week with a duo and returning to college in 1975 at Howard University, where she earned her music degree cum laude. “I got very traditional, classical training at Howard,” she says. “It was invaluable, but since I’d always had classical training, I sometimes wondered if too much classical training would be difficult to transfer to pop and jazz styles. As is turned out, it was! If you have a Julie Andrews type voice, as I do, how do you sing pop or jazz? It’s a different aspect of your instrument, and the timbre and delivery for singing jazz is completely different.”
While in Washington, Shapiro married her piano player, and they moved back to St. Louis to be close to their families. Jan kept singing even after their sons were born (Aaron in 1979, Adam in 1981). “I worked all the time,” she says. “I sang six and sometimes seven nights a week, and I loved it.”
Jan was invited to do clinics, eventually teaching voice at Southern Illinois University and St. Louis’s Fonbonne College. Thinking about her sons and the idea of “something to fall back on,” she welcomed the relative security of teaching. Moreover, one of her teachers encouraged her: “You’re a natural. You have something to teach.”
When a colleague at SIU called her attention to a job opening at Berklee, Jan sent in a letter “as a lark,” then was surprised when Berklee called her in for an interview. By that time she was divorced, and she needed to weigh her professional options.
At first Jan wasn’t ready to accept the job, but when the school called her back the following year with an even sweeter offer, she said yes. “It was a full-time position, and I had to think about my children,” she says now. “One of them was in kindergarten. If I were to keep working nights as a singer and they had school events, I’d never be able to go to them.”
In the fall of 1985, when she was 36, Shapiro gave up singing full-time and started working at Berklee.
While teaching, Jan also pursued a master’s at Cambridge College. She took a special interest in research and history, and in 1989 was the recipient of an NEA grant, which she used to research early jazz singers and the Boswell Sisters. Some years later, in 2000, she recorded an album of Boswell vocal arrangements (Boswellmania!) with Berklee faculty members Adriana Balic and Lisa Thorson.
Shapiro became acting vocal chair in the summer of 1996, and by January 1997 she was appointed head of the department – the first female chairperson in Berklee’s Performance Division. “I was a driven woman,” she recalls of that period. “It was right around the time my sons were going to start college. I threw myself into the job of growing and shaping the department.
“As a teacher, my philosophy had been ‘not everyone will be a star, but there are practical things you can learn about your instrument.’ As a chair, I wanted to make sure that singers became empowered by good musicianship as well as excellent vocal craft.”
Under Shapiro’s direction, Berklee’s vocal department has tripled in size and emerged as the premier contemporary voice department in the country.
Even as she was taking the helm as vocal chair, Shapiro found the time to record two albums in close proximity: Read Between the Lines (1997), a pop session, and Not Commercial (1998), with arrangements by Grammy winner Richard Evans. (In the 1970s, prior to her days at Howard University, Jan had recorded as featured guest artist with the “Airmen of Note,” the official Jazz Ensemble of the U.S. Air Force.)
Now, with her sons grown and her vocal department fully launched, Jan is clear about one thing: “I need to sing because it’s a part of who I am! I like connecting with an audience through my singing. It’s not so much about the fame or the money – I sing because it’s what I’m supposed to do in this life.”
The release of Back to Basics is a definitive step toward fulfilling that long-held goal. •
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