by Bud on 12 Sep 2004, 20:47
Borla thinks of her voice as one more instrument
September 2, 2004
BY LISA FRYDMAN Staff Reporter
Jazz vocalist Janice Borla, in her own words, is "an instrumentalist trapped in a singer's body." But no longer. Sunday at the 26th Chicago Jazz Festival, Borla will sing her own brand of jazz sans lyrics, setting her "inner horn" free.
"Jazz is an instrumental art form," Borla says from her Naperville home. "For this performance, I wanted to jump into the pool, to capture the interactive process. A voice without words has a different color. Like my latest album, 'Agents of Change,' I'm going to be performing some of the tunes without lyrics, singing the lines as a horn player would.
"Some people don't feel it's appropriate for vocalists to improvise, but spontaneous interaction between musicians is at the heart of jazz. I know I'm taking a risk. But it's high time for it to happen."
Borla, unlike many vocalists, is clear that when she sings, she is a team player. In fact, she prefers to discuss the instrumentalists who are joining her at Sunday's gig: Art Davis (trumpet), Dan Haerle (piano), John McLean (guitar), Larry Kohut (bass) and Borla's husband, Jack Mouse (drums). "I am really singing for and with my fellow musicians. ... When that clicks, the audience is going to get a better performance."
Borla, who is in her 50s but looks at least a decade younger (thanks to yoga and pilates), has been called Chicago's best-kept secret. But in the past year, she's had a coming-out party of sorts. "Agents of Change" was selected as the No. 1 jazz album of 2003 by WBEZ-FM, and has enjoyed wide critical acclaim and extensive international airplay.
And last November, "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer," and HDNET-TV, in a 30-minute PBS-produced documentary, highlighted perhaps Borla's strongest gift -- her devotion to teaching. Both shows focused on the Janice Borla Vocal Jazz Camp.
Founded in 1989, the camp provides an educational and nurturing environment for aspiring jazz vocalists in an intensified, week-long course, drawing a vast number of singers, musicians and educators from around the world. Borla is also on the faculty of the Jazz Studies Program at North Central College in Naperville, where she teaches vocal jazz improvisation and jazz history.
"I love teaching," she says. "I tell my students, above all, to be prepared, and once you are, then you can take all the risks. Those days are gone when all you needed was a great voice, and simply to show up onstage and say, 'My talent will carry me.'
"In the old days, jazz musicians learned their craft on the street. Today we're more sophisticated, more competitive. Vocalists need to keep up; they need to know jazz repertoire, history, and theory in order to participate as a full player. Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan are the exceptions. The real jazz innovators are the instrumentalists."
Borla began her vocal training at age 12. She earned a bachelor's degree in music from Barat College in Lake Forest, augmenting her vocal training with study at Northwestern University. While attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for graduate study, she became a member of the Ineluctable Modality, a 12-voice touring chamber ensemble that performed avant-garde "new music" by such contemporary composers as Mauricio Kagel, Morgan Powell and Iannis Xenakis.
Are there unique voices in today's jazz world, particularly among the "Top 40" jazz sensations?
Borla laughs hard, and the sound is hearty and contagious. "Oh, you mean as in Norah Jones and Diana Krall? The good news is that these women brought a lot of people to the door. The bad news is that their music is admittedly very hybrid -- not attached to any jazz improvisatory tradition. It is, unfortunately, too packaged, driven not by those with jazz roots, rather by those who seek youthful images to sell lots of albums."
Her voice waxes firm. "Jazz is art music and should never be treated like pop. I've been lucky in a way, free to do what I want, without commercial constraints, nurturing the music in my own time," she says.
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