San Francisco-based flutist Jane Lenoir has a career spanning several decades in a variety of idioms, including jazz, new "avant-garde" music, classical music, minimalist music and free improvization. This album is her first jazz album, but she has also recorded with the Seattle Group for New Music on Mode Records and a recently released album of contemporary Japanese music on Vienna Artists. She has performed in many venues, including the San Francisco Chamber Music Society, the Mills College Group for New Music, the Berkshire Music Center, the LA Museum's Monday Evening Concert Series, Loft Jazz, the Desert Music Festival in Carefree, Arizona, Music in the Mountains in Nevada City, CA, numerous orchestras and chamber ensembles. In 1982, she gave the world premiere of Hans Henze's opera, "El Cimarron" with a world-class ensemble that went on to receive the LA Times Beckmesser award for outstanding contemporary music performance of the year.
Her background as a trained classical flutist is awesome, with graduation from the Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, the Tanglewood Festival, the New College Festival, private study with Robert Willoughy, Julius Baker, Thomas Nyfenger and Jean Pierre Rampal. Jane started playing jazz in the late 70's, inspired by local jazz artists Art Lande and Mark Isham, and went on to work with a number of great local players, including the great SF pianist Allan Plank, Hal Stein, Calvin Keys and others.
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