The Jazz Scene: Jane Monheit’s new groove, music at the warehouse, and more

Singer Jane Monheit’s jazz background is formidable, as is the amount of critical acclaim she’s received since 1998, when she was the first runner-up in the Thelonious Monk Institute vocal competition. Chart-topping recordings for major record labels followed, as did stints with symphony orchestras, live-performance DVDs, and sessions with some of the greatest jazz musicians on the planet.

But the business of jazz is a fickle one, and Monheit, like many other artists before her, has moved on from major jazz labels and taken control of her own artistic destiny. 2019 finds the singer “with a voice of phenomenal beauty,” according to notoriously difficult-to-please New York Times critic Stephen Holden, with her own record label: Emerald City. Her first Emerald City release, The Songbook Sessions: Ella Fitzgerald, marks an impressive and challenging effort.

Monheit is a superior artist well worth hearing, and she will likely perform some of Fitzgerald’s numbers and plenty of others during her appearance at Sellersville Theater on Sunday, January 27, at 7:30pm.

Jazz and the Pops

Jazz has always played a part — sometimes large, sometimes otherwise — in more than 40 years of Philly Pops programming. It was only about five years ago that the jazz-influenced pianist Peter Nero, the face and the conductor of the Pops for 35 years, played his final show. Audiences could always count on Maestro Nero to bring in his jazz-focused cohorts, including Mel Tormé, John Pizzarelli, and various others.

The good news is that current Pops programmers also present jazz from time to time, mostly with the offshoot ensemble called the Philly Pops Big Band. It’s a swinging crew, as well it should be, given the caliber of the musicians within. The Pops big band, with special guest trumpeter Terell Stafford and vocalists Dee Dee Bridgewater and Alita Moses, will swing in 2019 with Jazzed!, presented at the Kimmel on Friday, January 18 at 8pm, with matinees at 3pm on Saturday and Sunday.

Philly Made at the Kimmel

Since opening its doors in December 2001, the Kimmel Center has maintained significant involvement in jazz education. The Kimmel has just announced its 2019 Jazz Residency program (its sixth annual), and it is the most ambitious one to date. The program has several components, all under the umbrella title “Philly Made,” featuring works that explore, according to the Kimmel, “cultural ideas of identity and belonging.”

Ultimately, three musical teams will each create a new project that is relevant and engaging to the Philadelphia community. Among the cutting-edge artists participating in the program are guitarist Dariel Peniazek, composer/guitarist David Allen, and trombonist Dan Blacksberg. All events, and there are many of them, take place at the Kimmel’s SEI Innovation Studio, and many of them are free.

Jazz at the warehouse

Warehouse on Watts (923-929 North Watts Street) is a new artist-focused, mixed-use space on the North Broad Street Corridor, one of our region’s revitalizing spots for arts and business. Two of this area’s finest and most in-demand players, pianist Tim Brey and alto saxophonist Chris Oatts, have joined forces to present jazz at the Warehouse one Wednesday each month. This month, on Wednesday, January 16, at 8pm, it’s the South Philly Big Band, led by Oatts and Brey and playing the music of Basie, Ellington, and the traditionalists as well as original charts by the members.