Jennifer Isaacs - Jazz Musician
Jennifer Isaacs offers a fresh perspective on standards with her unique voice and distinctive phrasing. With training in both jazz and classical voice, Jennifer’s singing illustrates full control over a fine instrument.
More than just a talented stage performer, Jennifer Isaacs is also a skilled arranger/composer/and lyricist. Working in and around New York City and New England, her set list includes many of her jazz arrangements of non-jazz tunes, as well as jazz and blues inspired songs of her own composition. Jennifer Isaacs has worked with Cidade and guitarist Charlie Apicella for almost ten years. Satisfy My Soul, an album of her originals with jazz arrangements of pop, reggae, classical, and rock tunes will be released in early 2009. [Click here to download Jenny’s press kit.]
Jennifer is one of a new generation of University- trained young jazz musicians. Like her peers, she demonstrates a refined appreciation of the history of jazz with a goal to continue its cause. Beyond this goal, Jennifer seeks to widen the scope of jazz to appeal to wider audiences by drawing from other genres. While staying true to the traditions of vocal jazz, her song choices and vocal stylings represent a wide variety of music idioms. Her favorite singer/storytellers are Etta James, Bjork, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Erikah Badu, Aretha Franklin, Louis Prima, Bono, Carmen Mc Rae, Billie Holiday, Sting, Paul Robeson, Chet Baker, Betty Carter, Alison Krauss, Jeff Buckley, Sarah Vaughn, Bonnie Raitt, Eddie Vedder, and Lauren Hill.
Jennifer approaches singing as an art and a sport. From her theatre background, she approaches all singing as storytelling delivered through moving melodies and lyrics. Jennifer uses music to artfully capture the passion, drama, beauty and shared suffering of human experience. Her approach to singing as a sport reflects her belief in a mastery of singing through daily discipline, increased physical control, healthy competition, team spirit among one’s band mates, and the strengthening of the body and mind through regimented study and practice.
Jennifer is an ASCAP (American Society for Composers and Publishers) recognized composer-lyricist. She writes many songs about her own experiences trying to make sense of passion. Often using her 10 years of work in the theatre as an inspiration, Jennifer also likes to write musicals, culminating in the past with her Jazz Musical Wrench, which earned her acceptance to NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. She is dedicated to the creation of new music, performing her songs with her band and writing many songs for the stage. Besides the composers of jazz standards, she admires such composer-lyricists as Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Quincy Jones, Woodie Guthrie, Johnny Cash, David Byrne, Danny Elfman, Bjork, Steven Sondheim, Bob Dylan, and Marvin Gaye.
Jennifer is also a capable pianist/accompanist. She often works as Music Director for theatrical performances and education programs. She teaches piano and voice privately throughout Northern New Jersey to students of all ages. She studies jazz piano with Jon Weiss in New York City and looks forward to accompanying her own singing at local venues.
Finally, Jennifer is committed to art for social change. Her work as a teaching artist demonstrates this commitment to using music, writing, and theatre to improve the lives of individuals, foster awareness and confidence, and create change through a new perspective. She believes that art shows us how we are all connected just as it brings people together for events. Jennifer is most inspired by music, singers, and singing that not only aesthetically please, but that use a combination of talent and spotlight to serve as documentary of the human experience, to capture history, shine a light on injustice, offer hope for the downtrodden, and protest in the face of tyranny. As she moves forward as an artist, Jennifer is committed to the power of singing and songwriting used together to tell stories that need to be told and move the soul to sympathy through music.
