Origin Artist

...Siegel has a remarkable vocal instrument...her sense of time and phrasing are superb...every note she sings is delivered with impeccable musicality.
Don Heckman, The International Review of Music

Over the past five decades, the voice of Janis Siegel, a ten-time Grammy winner and an eighteen-time Grammy nominee, has been an undeniable force in The Manhattan Transfer's diverse musical catalog. Alongside her career as a founding member of this musical institution, Siegel has also sustained a solo career that has spawned almost a dozen finely-crafted solo albums and numerous collaborative projects, amassed a large international fan base and garnered consistently high critical praise. She launched her solo career in 1981 on Atlantic Records with the release of Experiment in White produced by Joel Dorn. Her followup solo effort, At Home, earned her a Grammy nomination in 1987 for Best Female Jazz Vocal.

She collaborated with jazz pianist Fred Hersch on the 1989 effort, Short Stories, which JazzTimes ranked "among the most graceful, thoroughly heartbreaking efforts of the modern era, thanks to her rich, emotive vocals." That same year, the New York Music Awards named her Best Female Jazz Singer. Siegel rejoined Hersch in the making of Slow Hot Wind in 1995, and The Tender Trap in 1999.

Over the years, Janis' unmistakable voice has become one of The Manhattan Transfer's most recognizable trademarks. She sang lead on some of the Transfer's biggest hits, such as "Operator," "Chanson D'Amour," "Twilight Zone," "Birdland," "The Boy from N.Y.C.," "Spice of Life," "Ray's Rockhouse," "The Shaker Song," "Mystery," and co-wrote and sang lead on the Grammy-winning "Sassy." She also gained a reputation as a vocal arranger by writing five of the charts for the group's acclaimed masterwork, Vocalese, seven charts for the group's Grammy-winning album Brasil, and won a Grammy herself in 1980 for her arrangement of "Birdland." In 1993, she and her Manhattan Transfer colleagues received their honorary doctorates from the Berklee School of Music, and in 1999 they were among the first class of inductees into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame.

These days, you can find Janis in the places she loves most, the studio, producing various ventures for other artists and singing on a wide array of projects. One of her great joys is curating vocal groups to sing on recordings and two examples of that are Gino Amato's Latin Crossroads and Latin Crossroads 2.

She still tours with her trio, doing masterclasses at universities and high schools, and joining forces with New York Voices alto Lauren Kinhan for a live singers salon called Vocal Gumbo which was born of the pandemic and a live vocal showcase entitled Vocal Mania.

She and her Manhattan Transfer partners celebrated their 50th anniversary, doing collaborative shows with Take 6, promoting a new Manhattan Transfer CD, Fifty, which was released September 2022, culminating in a final farewell concert at Disney Hall on December 15th, 2023. A documentary is nearing completion, directed by Denny Tedesco, about the Transfer's extraordinary career.

Her 10th solo CD, released on Palmetto Records, is called Nightsongs and her most recent solo collaborations are Honey & Air, a Brazilian/jazz vocal adventure with her group Requinte Trio along with percussionist/singer Nanny Assis and pianist John di Martino; Some Other Time, a tribute to Leonard Bernstein with Swedish trombonist/singer Nils Landgren and arranger Vince Mendoza; Mazel, a Yiddish songbook with Cantor Daniel Kramer; Vox Humana, a Grammy-nominated album of big band Latin jazz with Bobby Sanabria and The Multiverse Jazz Orchestra; a Cy Coleman songbook project, The Colors of My Life, with longtime collaborator, Manhattan Transfer pianist/arranger Yaron Gershovsky; and Cryin' in My Whiskey, a collection of classic country with a jazz sensibility, featuring tunes by Vince Gill, Patsy Cline, Lucinda Williams, George Jones and others.

September 2026 will see the release of her 11th solo project, The Art of Vocalese, on Origin Records. Siegel's other collaborations and projects outside The Manhattan Transfer are many and varied. They include recording and touring as a member of the acclaimed improvisational vocal group, Bobby McFerrin's Voicestra, and being a participant alongside Luciana Souza, Mulgrew Miller and James Williams in a tribute to jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie at Philadelphia's Kimmel Center. Miss Siegel was also a member of the distinguished ensemble cast debuting Cy Coleman and Alan and Marilyn Bergman's jazz song cycle, "Songs For A New Millenium," at the Kennedy Center, contributed three cuts to pianist Renee Rosnes' CD, Ice on the Hudson, and recorded with Japanese Enka singer Mika Shinno on her latest album.

She is an adjunct professor at NYU along with her colleague Lauren Kinhan from the New York Voices, a member of the advisory committee for the Village Trip Festival, which celebrates Greenwich Village, a DJ and programmer along with singer Lezlie Harrison for radio station WBGO for the weekly program Singers Unlimited and finally she is cooking up a storm in her kitchen and working on a cookbook/travel + music project.

Siegel, who is a life-long resident and lover of Manhattan, feels that some styles are timeless and universal, regardless of prevailing trends. "I think people will always respond to emotion and to great songs sung well," she says. "And I think that real vocalists will always be in demand. There's nothing that approximates the human voice, not even AI. When you come down to it, people want to feel something."

RECORDINGS FEATURING Janis Siegel

Janis Siegel

The Art of Vocalese

Origin 82958