A self-taught musician and photographer,
Jamie Janover has developed numerous interests into a
full-time creative career. He began playing music on the
drums at age fourteen and has gone on to become a diverse
instrumentalist, familiar and comfortable with many different
styles of music. His greatest strength, however, lies
in his ability to listen. He has done extensive exploration
into the realm of improvisation and is especially recognized
as a true innovator on the hammered
dulcimer, He brings new direction to the ancient instrument
by applying diverse percussive techniques drawn from the
other instruments he plays: drumset, multi-percussion,
tabla, udu, bongos, congas, timbales and didjeridoo. In
September, 2002, Jamie won the 2002-2003 National Hammered
Dulcimer Championships in Winfield, Kansas.
Since moving to Boulder, Colorado in 1995, Jamie has played
with a diverse group of bands and solo artists including:
Zilla, The
Motet, Zuvuya,
The Theory Of Everything, The
Zambiland Orchestra, Nederland
Acid Jazz, Beth
Quist, Vibe Squad
and his own bands: Jamie
Janover and the Realms Ensemble, Jamie Janover and Friends
and Jamie
Janover's Loop Realm.
Jamie is a veteran of hundreds of guest appearances. Some
of the artists that Jamie has performed on stage and /
or recorded with include: Phish,
Stanley Jordan,
Bela Fleck, The
String Cheese Incident, Leftover
Salmon, G.
Love and Special Sauce, Sector
9, The Slip,
Karl Denson's Tiny
Universe, Garaj
Mahal, Deep
Banana Blackout, Govt'
Mule, Keller
Williams, The
Tony Furtado Band, Hamsa
Lila, Jimmy
Herring,
The Jazz Mandolin Project, Future
Man, Fareed
Haque Group,New Monsoon, Umphree's McGee and with
members of : The Grateful
Dead, The
Rebirth Brassband,
moe., Big
Head Todd and The Monsters, Jacob
Fred Jazz Odessy,
Widespread Panic, Blueground
Undergrass and The
Yonder Mountain String Band.
Click Here for the complete list of artists.
Jamie has appeared on over 20 official CD releases including
CDs by The
String Cheese Incident, ZILLA,
G. Love and Special
Sauce, Keller
Williams, Garaj
Mahal, Stewart
Lewis, Shanti
Groove, Wendy Woo, Chupacabra
and Stephen
Halpern.
Click
here for the complete disography.
Over the years, Jamie has performed at many prestigious
venues and festivals across the country including Red
Rocks Amphitheater, The
Telluride Bluegrass Festival, The
High Sierra Music Festival, The
Oregon Country Fair, The
Summit Music Festival, Berkfest,
Phish's festival style
shows: Lemmonwheel
and The
Great Went, String
Cheese Incident's New Years Eve and Horning's
Hideout Festivals, Tipatina's
in New Orleans, The Blue Note in Las Vegas, The
Knitting Factory in Hollywood, and The
Burlington Discover Jazz Festival.
Jamie is reinventing the hammered
dulcimer. Having come from a drumming background,
he recognized the incredible potential of the instrument
and focused on the percussive techniques of playing the
strings. Over time, Janover has developed his own approach
to the ancient instrument and a unique style characterized
by the intricate interplay between rhythm and melody,
the use of odd time signatures, metric modulation and
dynamic changes of volume and tempo. He has done extensive
exploration into the realm
of improvisation, often creating extended spontaneous
compositions. He began playing the tabla, congas, djembe,
udu and bongos thereby expanding his percussive reach
into the world of hand drumming. He learned to play the
didjeridoo while living in Australia in 1990.
Jamie Janover released his first solo hammered dulcimer
recording called, "Stellar
Conversations" in 1988 followed by a multi- track
recording in 1989 that featured Janover on hammered dulcimer,
drums and percussion called "Trapezohedron".The
next release called,"Streams
of Consciousness", was released in 1989 and also featured
Janover on the didjeridoo. Having acquired one of the
best hammered dulcimers one can find (a fully chromatic,
four plus octaveinstrument, complete with a dual damper
pedal system built by Sam Rizzetta) Jamie put out his
first CD called "Evolutions"
which consists of 12 solo improvisations recorded in the
summer of 1993. His next CD is called "Realms".
Released in Oct. of 1998, the recording marks the expansion
of Jamie's musical directions. Each song was inspired
by a different style of music. The CD features twenty
guest musicians playing a wide variety of instruments.
The guests include members of Phish, The String Cheese
Incident, Leftover Salmon, The Jazz Mandolin Project and
The Felcktones. Jamie plays hammered dulcimer on every
track and drums, percussion, tabla, udu, tamboura or didjeridoo
on several tracks."All
Strings Considered" was released in 2000, and is an
album of duets with the innovative bowhammer cymbalom
player Michael Masley. The most recent CD release is a
solo hammered dulcimer recording called "Now,
Center of Time" that came out out in July 2002.
Jamie has performed all over the U.S.. He has also played
in Canada, in Africa, for the Masai of Kenya, and in Australia.
His live performances have included accompanying dance
and theater as well as solo hammered dulcimer concerts,
playing in numerous bands / ensembles on drum kit, percussion,
dulcimer and didjeridoo.
In 1998 Janover launched Realm
Music, an independent record label that carries his
music and CDs of artists with whom he has worked. Based
in Boulder, Colorado, Realm Music's mission is to spread
the musical visions of independent artists. Music that
is unique and moves the mind and the body. The label has
a web site where one can listen to and order CDs at www.realmmusic.com.
Janover's music has been featured on the NPR radio program
All Things Considered and on New Sounds. It has also been
used for television soundtracks, theater and dance performances,
and film. His work has been treated in the pages of Dirty
Linen, Relix, Dulcimer Player News, The Boulder Daily
Camera, Boulder Weekly and on Jambands.com. His Now
Center of Time CD was featured on NPR's web program
All
Songs Considered.
Jamie plays solo hammered dulcimer shows, drums with his
Realms Ensemble, Zilla, Vibe Squad, Nederland Acid Jazz,
and percussion with a few other bands. He plays hammered
dulcimer and drums in his latest project is called Zilla
which features Michael Travis from the String
Cheese Incident along with Aaron Holstien and Steve
Vidiac.
An incredible new step in Jamie's creative output was
his invention of the Realms
Mobile, which is a musical vehicle! The Realms
Mobile is a recumbent tricycle, attached to which
is a mini-simulated drumkit. This enables Jamie to play
drums with both hands and pedal around at the same time!
It has created quite a sensation at large festivals including
String Cheese Incident's New Year's eve festivals, Leftover
Salmon's Planet Salmon Festival and the Burning
Man festival. Currently, Jamie is performing with
the aid of a loop sampler, which enables him to repeat
musical phrases and add many other layers using multiple
instruments, composing rich musical tapestries of sound
- "Jamie Janover's Loop Realm".
Jamie plays for weddings
and private parties.
He also does school
assemblies in which he presents the hammered dulcimer,
tabla and didjeridoo.
With each new project, new album, new band and new instrument
comes another step in the evolution of Jamie's creativity.
He continues to cross-pollinate both genres and mediums
in his diverse explorations into the infinite realms of
the creative process. Although best known for his musical
abilities, especially on the hammered dulcimer, Janover
is a truly multi-talented and totally unique artist in
the broadest sense of the term. Jamie Janover is also
a professional photographer. For his complete photo bio
click
here.
