Janel Leppin
Janel Leppin is an American cellist, composer and singer based in Washington, D.C. Her work crosses jazz, improvisation, chamber music and art-pop, often with a heavily processed cello sound. She is best known for her duo with her husband, guitarist Anthony Pirog, and for leading Ensemble Volcanic Ash, a seven-piece group recording for Cuneiform Records. Janel Leppin and Anthony Pirog record as Janel and Anthony, and their albums include Where Is Home (2012) and New Moon in the Evil Age (2024).
To March Is To Love
Cellist and composer Janel Leppin's second album with her Washington D.C. sextet Ensemble Volcanic Ash: progressive chamber jazz recorded live in the studio in one day, dedicated to Abdul Wadud and Pablo Casals. On Cuneiform, CD edition.
The Realist
Janel Leppin - The Realist (OOYH 048), featuring the incredible new trio of Janel with Devra Hoff (Sharon Van Etten, Nels Cline, Xiu Xiu) on bass, and Chad Taylor (Chicago Underground Duo, Marc Ribot, jaimie Branch) on drums, which Phil Overeem called "the freshest sounds from one of the most fascinating artists in creative improvisation."
Slowly Melting
On Slowly Melting, Janel Leppin turns her fuzz‑saturated cello into a one‑woman orchestra of grief, resolve and slow-motion rapture. Layering guitar, bass, piano and Prophet‑5 around her bowed lines, she sculpts a solo album where an ancient instrument, wired into modern circuitry, becomes a tectonic emotional force.
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September Impressions
*2023 stock* "On September 23, 2010, the day following Andrea's Kennedy Center appearance, two of my colleagues in the Twenty-first Century Chamber Ensemble, Janel Leppin (cello) and Mike Sebastian (reeds), came over to my home to jam. It was the anniversary of Coltrane's birth -- thus, "impressions" in this work's title to honor the master's legacy. I set up my recording rig to capture what I could. It was, in Andrea's words, "battlefield conditions": his expansive percussion rig in the living …