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“There’s something going on here, something real that sticks”
- L.A. Weekly

Jennifer Terran is a vocalist, pianist, songwriter, producer, hip-hop dance instructor, entrepreneur, mother (and too many other things to mention). With her independent record label, Grizelda Records, she has put out five phenomenal solo records since 1997: CRUEL, RABBIT the world wide critically acclaimed, THE MUSICIAN, LIVE FROM PAINTED CAVE and her latest universe, FULL MOON IN 3.

Jennifer Terran’s highly personal, inventive music and achingly beautiful voice has inspired rave responses from music lovers and publications all over the world (Telerama, Uncut, Rolling Stone, Oor etc.) making several top 10 lists, including second best album of the year in The Times (London).

Vocalist - Pianist - Composer - Producer - Engineer - Performer

JENNIFER TERRAN Profile

Jennifer Terran was born in Los Angeles, growing up in the 70’s on a dead end street in North Hollywood suberbia. She was the youngest of five children and raised Mormon, though she would leave her religion at 15. Her mother Adele Kathryn was an intense, passionate woman, an artist, a dancer and a singer. Jennifers’ parents met at a nightclub- her mom singing in a very tight, sexy sequened dress, her father Tony Terran in the band. Her father, a full Sicilian, was born in Buffalo, New York and began playing trumpet in his early teens. He got stuck in Los Angeles when the leader of his touring big band refused to pay for his return fair to New York. So he had no choice but to stay in LA where at 18 (and with a full head of hair at the time), he landed being one of the band members in the “I love Lucy Show”. This began his successful career as a studio player playing on over 10,000 records, T.V. sessions and motion pictures playing with nearly every influencial musician and band on the planet including the Beatles, Frank Zappa and Ella Fitzerald. He was almost always the loudest instrument in the mix.

Jennifer, a Leo, did her first featured home concert in her livingroom when she was about 4. Soon after she performed in several musical theatre productions. She was 5 when she started her first entrepenuer business selling “back scratches” to her family members for five cents. A favorite pastime was singing songs from the 70’s pop song books while her oldest sister April accompanied her on piano. The family broke up with a divorce when Jennifer was 8 and thus began her many moves with her mother, older sister Eve and stepfather. At 8, she decided she wanted to learn to play piano so she could accompany herself singing. She began typical beginning classical piano lessons at age 9 which went on for 2 or 3 years. Though she lacked the desire to conform to her classical teacher’s lessons, she was greatly moved by music and by singing in particular. Jennifer got her first big rush of being on stage when at age 9, she performed in the school talent show singing a song from “The Muppet Show” which brought her best friend to tears. It was from this moment, that she began to embrace the idea of making music as her life dream.  

At 12 Jennifer was discovered by a record producer who was convinced he would make her into the next big kid star. She worked in his studio non stop recording old cheesy pop songs. The producer would sit in the control room crying from the raw charge and emotion in her pre-pubesent voice. The flow of the project was interrupted by her mom’s decision to move once again to a small town in Utah. She went from a concrete, smog filled Los Angeles existence, tagging along with dad to recording sessions to the smells and sights of hay, families with 13 children and Mormon churches on every street corner.

Soon after the move, Jennifer’s mother started getting ill. Jennifer and her sister who had always carried adult responsibilities, cared for her baby siblings while her mom and stepfather visited natural health clinics. Five months later with Jennifer just turning 13, her mother died at age 41. She was diagnosed with Lukemia though there are arguments that her sickness was due to other causes. Upon the death of her mother, Jennifer moved back to Los Angeles to live with her father.

From there it was more recording with the big producer guy and his cheesy songs, school talent shows and the Hollywood nightclub showcase and audition scene. It was also at this time when Jennifer started acting, though she was not very good at it.

At 15 Jennifer left her religion. The first in her family “to see the light”, over the years the rest would follow. By this time piano had taken on a more loose, self developed approach with slower tempos being her favorite. By the time she was 17, she was craving to feel some normalicy and wished to take a break from the identity she had built around music. She went to University of California Santa Barbara and earned a high honors bachelor degree in Sociology during which time she began her love affair with long distance running. Jennifer ran 7 marathons placing 3rd in her age group in her last LA marathon race. With her boyfriend at the time she started several entrepreneur projects during college and continued teaching aerobics and soon began dancing hip hop which she still teaches. Through college Jennifer had many intense withdrawls from being away from music, but didn’t want to do back into it half way. So finally the day after her college graduation, Jennifer began writing music for the first time.

The first songs that came out were very personal. They were also very developed musically though she was ignorant of music theory. She wrote many, many songs in her first year of writing and for all intensive purposes taught herself piano, developing her own beautiful strange way with harmony and dissonance. She had several bands, including “Puppet Show” and “Grizelda” while at the same time starting to play solo piano/voice concerts in a local café. Several demos later, she began making her debut “Cruel”- with the help of engineer Julie Last (Joni Mitchell, Ricki Lee Jones, Shawn Colvin) who co-produced and engineered half the record with her. The other songs were recorded with a local engineer which were more raw one takes. Jennifer played a bunch of shows in California as an indie artist and received some strong recognition for her raw intensity, authenticity, beautiful voice and strange, original pop songs. Chris Douridas took in Jennifer’s music featuring her on KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic”. He also felt her music should be signed to a record deal, so he played it for David Geffen who was rumored to say she was “amazing! but wow, so intense”.

Jennifer started recording again right away releasing one year later her very playful and quirky elaborate EP, “Rabbit”. At this time she launched an independent music festival called F.A.T. (Female Artist Tour) which played a series of concerts in California.

THE MUSICIAN ERA
Disenchanted with the music industry and sick of peoples’ stupid advise on how she shou ld be more “commercial”, Jennifer disappeared from view in her bedroom and began making her lushly, epic concept album “The Musician”. She bought some home studio equiptment, borrowed some vintage tube microphones and an old analog 12 track and thus began the intense

learning curve of recording, producing and mixing on her own. Though the process was a challenge, it was equally liberating to be in control of painting the recorded sound, a process that felt to her just as important as the songs and performances themselves. Her recording style emerged with “The Musician” as being just as unique, quirky and deeply personal as her music.

Jennifer treated ‘The Musician’ with the utmost secrecy, never sharing it with anyone but the musicians recording in her room.   “I didn’t want anyone’s praise or criticism getting in the way of what was proving to be a very pure, authentic experience. The only thing that mattered was getting the music and the mixes to feel right to me. There’s always this notion that you should get peoples feedback on what you are recording or writing and I had come to the point where I felt this to be totally irrelevant to what I was after. This was the whole point of the record as a concept album as well... to follow the still inner voice. And somewhere in the back of my head, I knew that if the music was moving me, I wouldn’t be the only one. It was a very happy time in my creative life… one that didn’t involve other ears.”,   recalls Jennifer.

‘The Musician’ was completed in late 2000 and she toured here and there on the west coast for about a year until a well respected music publication in the Netherlands discovered it with the music editor quoting, “I’d rather trade in all my Tori Amos CD’s for Jennifer Terran’s “The Musician”. Soon after Jennifer and Brendan Statom, her partner on double bass began touring in Europe. One year later, the Rounder label licensed the album from Jennifer’s indie label, Grizleda Records. The self made indie album received great praise making many critics best of lists, “2nd Best Album of the year” in THE TIMES (London) and 4 stars in Rolling Stone. Several tours followed with sold out concerts across Europe.

FULL MOON in 3
The next several years, Jennifer went through some massive life changes, the divorce of her partner of 8 years, a second marriage and the birth of her first child, Phoebe Moon Ray. She also put out her first live CD “Live From Painted Cave” which captured her long tradition of her intense and intimate home concerts. The live album features songs from her prior albums, as well as a few unrelased ones but also for the first time renditions of other peoples’ work, including Cohen’s “Halleluja”, “”Streets of Loredo” and “Que Sera”.

It was during these 3 years that she was conceiving and recording “Full Moon in 3”, another ambitious concept album which stretched her in many new and exciting dimensions. Haunting, achingly beautiful, sometimes psychadelic, “full moon in 3’ was unraveling as a deep universe with Jennifer’s gorgeous string and mellotron arrangements as well as a surprise moment of almost hiphop as she raps nakedly about a sexual 3 experience.

Some Jen thoughts on Full Moon in 3…
“The process of making “Full Moon in 3” was a very epic, sensual, synchronistic time period where my thoughts and dreams would echo in real life. Maybe I would think of a friend I hadn’t seen or thought of in many years and all of a sudden they would walk up my driveway. Or the music would be raging in every cell of my mind and body and there in the middle of nowhere would appear the number 3 written on the pavement.

If this music could look like something, then it would be what you see from Camino Cielo, the high ridge above Santa Barbara, where there are no cars or houses. On one side, you can see down to the ocean with the islands and our small city with its bittersweet human drama. Being at a distance from it and surrounded by nature, you gain perspective on the pretense we have as people. In nature, there is no pretense. It’s all accepting.

On the other side of the ridge, you see   the back country… big, glorious California mountains… looking just how they looked hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. It would be dusk and the moon would be rising and the sun setting. This is a small snapshot of what the spirit and the power of ‘Full Moon in 3’’ captures for me”

Jennifer will be putting out the record in Europe with a tour this Autumn. So far, it’s a very independent release and promotional effort. Plans are underway for some shows in the US including New York where she will be playing for the first time. In the mean time, her next record is all written, waiting for the right moment to be solidified on tape.

PRESS QUOTES:
(click here to read the complete reviews)

"ALL OF you wondering whether Kate Bush is going to release another album, or if Tori Amos will ever make another record as good as her debut, can stop bothering with such side issues. Here's the album you've been waiting for.... I don't think there's a duff track. Her voice is staggering. And you've got to love someone who can yell out a full-on, Springsteenesque '1-2-3-4!' to announ ce the arrival of a violin."
Terran's "The Musician"- #2 BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR
- THE TIMES (London)

" * * * * "
(Four Stars for "The Musician")
-ROLLING STONE

"I'd gladly trade in all my Tori Amos CDs for Jennifer Terran's 'The Musician'...a magnificant album." ***** (five stars and #1 BEST POP ALBUM of 2001
HEAVEN MAGAZINE (Holland) - Eric Scipio

"Breathtaking... timeless... pure... monumental.... Categorizing Jennifer Terran is impossible. Terran is a style of her own."
One of the Best Top 10 Albums of the Year (Oor Critics Choice)
-OOR (Holland)

"Terran is a breathtaking singer. Her vocal innuendos are pure, free of the mannerism of a lot of contemporary female colleagues."
- FOCUS (Belgium)

"The Musician is Terran's third album, but strangely enough it has the innocence of a debut. The compositions are fluent and playful, both rough and soft. Terran produced and mixed everything herself, but has succeeded in preventing that the spontaneity of her music was killed by perfectionism... A t some point Tori Amos had that same gift, but in the meantime she has become a phenomena? Let's hope that Jennifer Terran will never become world famous."
- PLATOMANIA (HOLLAND)

"Terran is extraordinary USA singer/songwriter and THE MUSICIAN places her firmly in the top echelon of her craft. This is remarkable pop music, and one o f 2002's few essential albums"
"The Musician: #1 BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR
- SHAKENSTIR (UK)

Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco combined couldn't take on Terran's integrity."
Positively State Street -Marko 72

"Jennifer Terran is a stand out diva!"
Bam Magazine-Carey McDonald

"CRUEL is a resolutely compelling album of rare grace and uncompromising passion."
Scene Magazine -Steve Libowitz

"...sounds a lot like, well, Jennifer Terran. Grade A."
L.A. Times-Bill Locey

"Terran is remarkable...equal to that of a young Joni Mitchell."
LA Weekly-Greg Burk

"Terran's vocal ability is staggering. Her songs are beautiful."
Independent