Janel Leppin

Janel Leppin (born 1981) is an American jazz and genre crossing cellist, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and weaver who has toured as a soloist and accompanying artists internationally since 2004. She has presented her work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the ISSUE Project Room.

Leppin released four solo recordings, The Brink (Shiny Boy, 2023), American God (2017), Mellow Diamond (2016), and Songs for Voice and Mellotron (2016). She collaborates as part of Janel and Anthony with her husband, American guitar player Anthony Pirog. Recordings of her work as a composer and side musician appear on Sacred Bones, Bella Union, Touch, Tzadik, Sub Pop, Editions Mego, Sister Polygon, Dischord Records, Ideologic Organ and Cuneiform Records. Her work has experimental, avant-garde, jazz, free jazz, classical, ambient and rock influences.

Janel and Anthony
Leppin records in a cello and guitar duo with Anthony Pirog as Janel and Anthony.

New Moon in the Evil Age (Cuneiform Records, 2024) is a double album with one half instrumental works and vocal works on the second half.

Where is Home was released by Cuneiform Records, in 2012.

The duo released a self-titled and self-released recording in 2007. A Fifth Anniversary Collectors Edition LP was released of the duo in 2010.

"Janel & Anthony - guitars and cello respectively - play a haunting and humbly virtuosic form of music wherein the elements of electronics, looping, and lo-fi timbres live both in intimacy and in majesty in the same house as acoustic instruments and folk/blues-inspired melodies. As such, it is both timely and timeless, drenched as it is in intoxicating atmosphere; wan, quiet voices submitting to waves of sonic drama. Who could possibly resist it?" – Nels Cline,

"..one of the most stunning records this year.. Where is Home is a mind-blowing record that will stay in my listening rotation for years." - Sound Colour Vibration,

"Ethereal..conversational magic" - The Village Voice, "A beguiling, thoughtfully crafted album" - BBC Classical

Solo Recordings
The Brink (Shiny Boy, 2023) is Leppin's first solo cello recording and was performed live without overdubs.

An album for voice and cello called American God, was released in April 2017. This album continues with political themes, as Leppin put it together with the 2016 Presidential Election in mind.

In April 2016, Leppin released two solo recordings; Mellow Diamond and Songs for Voice and Mellotron.

Originally titled Songs of the One-Armed Woman; Songs for Voice and Mellotron was written in 2015, when Leppin injured her right elbow and was unable to perform solo concerts on her primary instrument, the cello. The EP-length recording includes politically-charged music. Most tracks were recorded live with Leppin singing and playing the M4000D (mellotron) simultaneously, with very little overdubbing.

Leppin's first solo recording, Mellow Diamond, draws far and wide from avant-garde pop to ambient music. She recorded vocals, analog synthesizers, harpsichord, pedal steel, cello, mellotron, found sound samples, and radio frequencies. Several political messages are found in the work.

"Art Holds Her Hand, a funereal paced and sombre death march, atop which Janel’s lilting ice maiden tones lull us into the land of Morpheus with impressionistic tales of the primal forces of Nature." - Roger Trenwith

"Instrumental intimacy swept up in arrangements that cluster around her voice, as delicate and as imposing as a sheet of falling ice.” NPR Music

Jazz Works
Leppin leads Ensemble Volcanic Ash and has two recordings on Cuneiform Records; Ensemble Volcanic Ash was released in 2022 and Ensemble Volcanic Ash: To March Is To Love in 2024. This jazz group has included harp, cello, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, guitar, bass and drums. The group was premiered before a sold-out crowd at the legendary Bohemian Caverns in Washington D.C. to rave reviews, being called "Aaah-vant Garde [sic] at its finest." The ensemble has included Luke Stewart, Kim Sator, Sarah Hughes, Mary Lattimore, Kim Sator, Brian Settles, Anthony Pirog, Larry Ferguson, Amy Frasier, Jacqueline Poullaf, Betsy Wright and Jaimie Branch.

"It’s rare to encounter a recording with the kind of melodic richness delivered by the latest from Janel Leppin. The magic of the melodies on Ensemble Volcanic Ash is in both their voicing and their motion, behaving like a river that marks the path and carries passengers along by the force of its currents. The mix of chamber jazz, art rock, contemporary classical, and electronic music are merely facets through which the melodies becomes focused, like glass soaking in sunbeams and spitting it back out in a prismatic light show. I’m pretty addicted to this record, and don’t anticipate that waning any time soon; your results may vary—but I doubt it.""-Dave Sumner Bandcamp Daily

Also Appears On
“Nadler has enlisted some sturdy female clout for this record, including Angel Olsen and Sharon Van Etten for vocal cameos. Though it’s the multi-instrumentalist Janel Leppin who really shines, her strings meeting the tremor in Nadler’s voice in a way that at moments feels profound. In such company, and with a new strength to her songs, Nadler’s force has never seemed greater.” Four Stars - Q Magazine